Kelsey Carignan and her family woke up Oct. 9 to water flooding into the main floor and basement of the family's Walnut Grove home.
It was the last thing the family needed as Kelsey dealt with the return of her cancer and treatments.
"So it was less than five minutes of water at 5:30 in the morning," Kelsey explained. "We came downstairs, and it was just like, waterfalls down our built-ins, like water throughout everything. And I ran down stairs to turn off the water, and it was coming up the air vents and out the pot lights and just everywhere."
The family didn't want to go through this again (this is their fourth leak) so the best course of action was to replumb the home.
"We got a phone call the week of the Christmas holiday to do a quote for a repipe in Walnut Grove area," said Spencer Turley, owner of Murrayville Plumbing and Heating.
Turley worked up the quote, about $40,000 worth of work, not realizing it was anything other than a routine project.
"I was speaking with my wife and somehow it came up and then I brought up the name鈥�," he said "She had, you know, gotten over cancer and then at like a five-year scan, they found out she was stage 4. My wife and I were talking what we could do to help, and I reached out to the BC Plumbing and Heating Association."
Six companies agreed to help.
"It wasn't a hard sell at all," he said.
He reached out to EMCO 91原创 about supplies.
"And right away they said the same thing, 'send the material list. We'll give you what we can'," Turley said.
91原创 firms Murrayville Plumbing and Heating Ltd.; Bella Restoration Ltd.; Ring Away Plumbing, Heating and Cooling; and Brian Mussato Plumbing and Heating, along with John Sadler Plumbing and Heating from Surrey, and CIMA Mechanical worked together to redo the home.
Turley said the companies all wanted to get the family back into their home because they had big challenges in the coming months with Kelsey's health.
"We all put it together, and within a week, we piped in the house," he said.
There's still restoration work to be done after the plumbing, such as restoring their kitchen cabinets, but the plumbing work had to be done other work could be tackled.
Since the October flooding, the family and their downstairs tenant have been forced to rent elsewhere. The family expects to be back home in March. They've lived there 12 years.
Kelsey, 38, is looking forward to the most mundane of household activities 鈥� "Probably watching a movie with my kids on the couch, making a meal, just the really, really simple things that you take for granted. Because those are the big things."
Piping problems are common in that area of 91原创. The water reacts with the zinc and older fittings, causing leaks and failures.
"They've had four floods and basically every time they had a repair done, there was a leak happening in a different area of the home," Turley said. "So their house had been completely taken apart from the flood they'd had I guess in October, and they were waiting to figure out how they could kind of rebuild the house, but in order to rebuild the house, you basically have to replace the entire plumbing and mechanical system.
"Even as we cut out the drywall, we exposed hundreds of fittings that were on the verge of breaking," Turley noted.
The plumbers replaced all the lines and as many of the fittings as possible with materials that won't burst due to the water. Turley said there are a few fittings that must be metal but those can be accessed for repair. There's also a new tankless hot water system.
The home previously required a repair for about $35,000 because of a leak, and the family has spent a few thousand to fix two other leaks.
"So there's been multiple floods around the area. Anyways, long story short, it [the water] just ate our pipes from the inside out," Kelsey said.
With the home soon repaired and restored, the family 鈥� husband Ryan and their boys Noah, 13, and 10-year-old Holden, can focus on Kelsey's care. The mom who teaches yoga online from her home thought the cancer battle had been won.
"In October 2018, I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. And I did chemo, radiation, bilateral mastectomy. And everything went away, and I made it for five years. "And usually that's kind of like the celebration mark. If you make it to that five-year mark, it means good things," she explained. "But for me, at that five-year mark, we found out that the cancer had actually spread to my liver and to my lungs."
She's been doing oral chemotherapy for about a year and a half, but recent tests show she's not responding to treatment as much anymore. She meets with doctors mid-January to plan out next steps.
But for her, the plumbing and restoration firms teaming up to help her is confirmation there is so much good in the world and that people like to help others.
"I think it's very humbling to be on the receiving end of kindness. And it's much easier to be on the giving end," she said. "So I think that initially it felt like I couldn't accept, like it was just too much."
The family members are the ones accustomed to doing for others so to have so many help them has touched her.
She's come to see it as a form of balance 鈥� sometimes others are helped and sometimes they help.
"And you know, it just, it makes you believe in miracles. It makes you believe in things that are so much bigger than you," Kelsey said. "And I think it just gives so much hope, not only to me, but to my family."
