So this happened a few months ago, but I figured I would tell the tale!!
So the toilet fill valve had broke on our toilet in the middle of my work week, so the water would just run, so until I got a day off work to run to the ace hardware (I work 12 hr shifts and they are closed before and after shift) we had to just turn the water valve on to flush the toilet and fill the tank, so we used it like that for a couple days. I would have just had my wife go get it, but I didn't figure it was too big a deal, and didn't want to put the burden on her.
Well, on my Friday at shift change I get a frantic phone call from my wife....all I hear is her saying sorry and apologizing, nearly in tears....I ask what is going on is everyone ok? She tells me she flooded my reloading room......she had left the water on and it overflowed for about 45 minutes, into the floor heat vent, through the ducting, and over to the next vent....directly above my bench, reloading/gun room, shelves with powder, primers, thousands of rounds of brass, guns, and so on. I rush home and she is in a panic ha ha, there is towels, blankets, kids cloths and everything somewhat absorbent on the floor trying to dry up the nearly 2" deep of water!!!! My bench is soaked, reloading die boxes have water in them, all my powder canisters are soaked, primer boxes are soaked, EVERYTHING is wet!! I very calmly tell her everything is fine, don't worry about it, it can be fixed, so on and so fourth.....and after she leaves the room I nearly have a mini melt down ha ha.
After spending hours drying everything and going through stuff, I was very thankful that all my powder minus one old can of pistol powder that was packaged in a cardboard bottle is still perfectly fine....I keep the foam pieces in the lids of my powder, and it keeps them air tight, or close enough. I lost some primers, probably around a thousand or so, but not terrible considering....went through all my die boxes and dried them out and sprayed them down with wd-40, same with all my tools, my press, my powder dispenser, dumped the water out and put a bunch of brass and put in the oven to dry, had to clean out ammo boxes, had to dry a bunch of bullets off, and so on. Took apart several guns and dried/cleaned them. My digital scale thankfully survived....my note book with recipes and info on probably around 50 or more different guns of friends and family and my own, notes on seating depth, CBTO, nodes, powders tested, bullets tested, rate of throat erosion, hours of work and measurements and testing, has all the ink water stained and some of it is hardly legible, it needs to be transcribed digitally.
So.....I moved my reloading equipment and supplies to the other side of the room, and immediately fixed the toilet ha ha. My wife felt so bad she baked me a batch of cookies and got me a 6 pack of beer for while I was drying everything off ha ha, she is pretty good to me.
Pretty horrible thing to happen, but overall, it turned out much better than it could have. So, if you have the option, keep your gear and reloading equipment/supplies away from vents or other possible places where water would come down on it, because it SUCKS!!!
Have a good one all!!
