Frozen Pipes

How many repair men does it take to fix a pipe?

Yesterday morning my friend and I are sitting in the living room playing video games when all of the sudden he hears this loud hissing noise. He is like, "What the hell is that noise?"

Naturally my reply is, "What the hell do you mean, 'what is that noise?'"

So he gets up to check and I hear , "Oh my god!"

I retort, "What the hell do you mean 'Oh my god'?!" and jump out of my seat to go see for myself.

Water... everywhere. EVERYWHERE!

A pipe beneath the sink froze and burst due to the weather, spraying freezing cold water all over the room. My kitchen is pretty huge so when I say there was water spraying everywhere... that's a big problem!

My friend, who is a boy and automatically assumes responsibility to save my house says, "What do I do?" cause he used to live where it's warm and sunny. Pipes do not freeze near the equator. So here I am thinking back to when I was about 7 years old and a pipe had burst in our kitchen... trying to remember what my mother had done to stop the leaking.

A knob. She crawled under the sink and turned a knob! I'm shouting by this point because I can rarely hear myself speak under normal circumstances, so I felt the need to be louder, "TURN A KNOB!"

My friend dumbfounded is like, "What? Turn a knob? wtf are you talking about?"

"THERE SHOULD BE A KNOB UNDER THE SINK NEAR THE PIPES. IT TURNS THE WATER OFF. SO TURN THE KNOB!" Unfortunately the backwards plumbing here made the knob useless as turning it in either direction did absolutely nothing. By this point I have an armful of hand towels and I'm throwing them on the tile to prevent the water from rising any higher and threatening the carpet.

I call my mother in desperation and she in her typical motherly way says, "Go to your water heater and turn the knob near the pipes leading outside. It will turn off water to the entire house, but at least you won't be flooding anymore."

So we attempt this and low and behold this knob? Also does nothing! We notice a brightly colored lever a few feet away and pull that in desperation. Finally, the water stops.

But wait, the fun doesn't end there. My mother has to make the call for me since, y'know deaf phonecalls and all etc., to get a repair man over. The guy shows up right away, she must have convinced him there was worldly peril or something because seriously less than 10 minutes later he was at our door. He comes in takes at look at the problem and declares, "Wow. I'm going to need help for this let me call my partner."

So he calls his partner and about 10 minutes later his partner shows up. He comes in, takes a look then states, "Ah, I should be able to solder this back together in no time. I just need some parts. Let me make a call."

Ten minutes after that a third repair man shows up with the parts and together they fix the problem. So the answer to my previous question: 3.

Edit: Posted this at 2:22, I win!