Man injured using friend's exploding toilet in Rhode Island

[gregjrichards]

"A man in Providence, Rhode Island got the fright of a lifetime this week when he went to use his friend's bathroom and the restroom exploded.

Jeffrey Oppenheim of New York was visiting his friend Andrew Pessin on Sunday when he went to use the first floor bathroom just 10 minutes after arriving.

Oppenheim says he heard a strange clicking noise in the lavatory just second before a mysterious combustive force through him out of the room."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...erious-blast-rips-lavatory.html#ixzz3SgKmP9ty

 

[zwiebel]

Well, heck.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...erious-blast-rips-lavatory.html#ixzz3SgKmP9ty

 

[zwiebel]

Am I sad sleuthing an exploding bathroom? But you can see patterns of water splashed upwards on the timbers underneath the wallboards. So I'm guessing (from the pic showing the wallboards blasted into the bathroom) that there are water inlet pipes running within those walls, and they got fractured. I don't think there'd be a toilet waste pipe in there. Whereas if it was a build-up of gases in the waste pipe, I'd have thought the toilet seat would have been blasted off and maybe even the ceramic toilet bowl fractured (lucky it didn't as that can cause severe injuries).

Anyway, as it's hardly likely there'd be a gas build-up in a water inlet pipe, I think there's a gas pipe in the wall too, and that's what caused the big bang, fracturing the water pipes as it went. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if I'm totally wrong.

 

[zwiebel]

It looks kinda old, so I'm wondering if the clicking noise could have been the sound of old copper pipes splitting?

(Yes, I have had problems with old bathrooms in the past, in case anyone's wondering. In fact, the house I live in now, the original bathrooms were all outside in the yard. )

ETA: And to get a hot bath, I had to light the furnace hanging over the tub.