The home maintenance thread below brought to mind a mishap that happened at my sister and brother-in-law's home. When my wife and I were sleeping in their basement family room, I got up for my usual middle-of-the-night pee. Getting out of bed, I put my feet down on a cold, squishy carpet. I sloshed my way to their downstairs bathroom, to find water running down the wall. Turns out the toilet in the upstairs bathroom, directly above the downstairs one, had spontaneously cracked apart, draining all the water out of the tank, which kept filling. Their whole downstairs flooded, as well as part of their garage. There must have been a path of least resistance for the water to drain down, because the upstairs didn't flood, but still, they were not happy campers.

Got any stories?

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Not my story, but a friend of mine had an upstairs toilet tank crack while they were away on vacation. They had to gut 3/4 of the house down to the studs.

The biggest surprise in a property I owned was termites found a few months after purchase.

When I leave, even for just 1 night, I turn off the water to the house.
Will minimize damage in cases like above

Mine was when I installed shelving in the kitchen pantry. One screw nicked the upstairs sewer pipe right behind the sheetrock. Over the course of many months that pantry wall very slowly became discolored.

Eventually the pantry got emptied and the sheetrock replaced. (And the basement storage below it cleaned, albeit after a few keepsakes had to be thrown out.)

When I looked (and discovered) the pipe behind the wallboard, I saw the pinhole.

My wife asked me a couple of weeks ago what the roar was coming from the living room. I discovered that the subwoofer was playing at full blast. To this day I don't know why although I suspect the amplifier has a bad circuit. I ended up cutting power to the speaker which of course turned it off.

Later in the day I noticed water on the hardwood floor at the radiator (our heat source) shutoff valve which is just a few inches from the subwoofer. I cleaned it up but a few minutes later water was again leaking from the radiator. A cloth wrapped around the valve and sitting in a cup allowed most of the water to drain safely into the cup while I awaiting my radiator system guy to come over which he did the next day.

Turns out that when we had hardwood floors put down, the hole for this radiator pipe was not quite large enough and the pipe (and valve) were very slightly distorted. The vibrations from the subwoofer "broke" the valve. We ended up replacing the valve and the pipe running into the basement.

One good thing about the exercise is that this very pipe was covered in asbestos which had been missed when I had all of the asbestos pipe coverings removed when we bought the house. Now that section has a new valve and is asbestos free.

And my checkbook is a bit lighter.

Friend of mine was working on the foundation of his 100+year old house, a project that should have been delegated to professionals. He was trying to replace about 20 feet of the foundation which was sinking because of poor drainage from the driveway. He shored up that side of the house so he could chip out the old foundation and pour a new one. All this was way beyond his capability to comprehend some big issues, mainly how heavy a house is, as evidence by what happened to his shoring work. The house started to sag over a few days, with the shored up wall leaning out at its base. Lucky for him, he was able to get a contractor to come right to his rescue. What he thought would have been some hundreds of dollars of materials and sweat equity ended up being some tens of thousands. He was close to losing the whole side of the house. After that his wife forbade him to do anything under the house. We were all much relieved by her edict, and I think he was too.

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Quote
STL
When I leave, even for just 1 night, I turn off the water to the house.
Will minimize damage in cases like above

Would that not cause the pipes to freeze with the residual water? (if the heat is not on.)

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Hurts like a bastid...