As a landlord, one of my biggest challenges involves how to control the flow of water. Tomorrow we have a huge storm coming and I am working with handymen to fix a few questionable roofs.

Also, when we have a serious downpour like the one that the weatherman is expecting we also get flooding in the crawl spaces underneath my units. On several instances it has been so severe that it has damaged the floor heaters and has been very expensive to repair. We have made quite a few modifications in the landscaping and added french drains to divert the water. Still, when I hear the weather forecast predicting inches of rain, I shutter.

During the summer months in So Cal when it doesn’t rain, I still don’t get a break. The flip side of the coin is dealing with plumbing. We have the occasional pipe burst. My friends Steve and Gina just had a bad one at their condo. They were sleeping and a pipe burst three floors above them. They were awakened to find water flowing through the walls, ceiling and even out of the security speaker box in the hallway. It must have felt like they were going down with the ship! Months and many thousand dollars later they are on target to complete their renovation in a few weeks. Surprise, your are renovating!

Last summer we had quite a few major drain malfunctions. At one point, I had three plumbers working at the same time. We had a sewer that turned into a septic tank. We sent a camera down to take a look. Smile! Meanwhile everything (everything meaning effluence which is the technical term for poo) was backing up onto the bathroom floor from the tub. Yuch! Simultaneously, we were replacing massive amounts of drain pipe at another property. I was also getting calls from a tenant at a third property that they were having a backup emergency in their bathroom. It was a plumbing meltdown extravaganza of epic proportion. And all in a single afternoon!

In the end, we put in a new sewer line, replaced all the pipe and snaked everything that needed snaking. The bills got paid and my nervous breakdown was averted. Phew!

Alls well that ends well.