solve the mystery (or lay some odds)

Living in this house has been a real change of pace. I went from years of warm climate condo living into a 25-year-old house built on a river where the snow comes down by the bucket. Yesterday I shoveled snow for four hours (I bought a snow blower and shorted it my second day) and there's still a three inch sheet of ice on our driveway. What do you use to break the ice? "Come here often?" Forgive me, GOD I'M SO SORE.

I could write every day for a month about some idiosyncracy of the house. I won't bore you with most of it, but I need a sanity check on the latest. A few nights ago I ran the dishwasher before going to bed like I do most days. In the morning I found a big puddle of water in front of the dishwasher. A little later that morning kathleen ran the upstairs washing machine. Somewhere into its cycle it spit a ton of water onto the floor, but the housekeepers happened to be here at the time so I don't know where it leaked from.

Given that we'd run both appliances approximately daily for the 2.5 months we lived here, neither had ever leaked, and then they both failed in the same way at the same time, it seemed likely these incidents were related. I ran the dishwasher again: runs to completion, no leaks. I ran the washing machine that afternoon with the same load: runs to completion, no leaks. So they both failed the same way during a 12 hour period - once each - and then both started working again with no adjustments. Also, keep in mind that we're in the midst of a record extended cold spell.

Yet the plumber who has done most of the plumbing work here says he'll pit his 35 years plumbing experience against my probability inference and says they're not related. I talked to our general contractor and he took the same position. They want me adjusting hoses and checking out appliance parts. I am fully confident they are not just jerking me around and actually believe what they are saying.

Have I gone totally nuts?

Their rationale, assuming I understand it, is that the washing machine is on the top floor and the dishwasher on the middle floor, so if there were some kind of drain blockage causing them to back up, it would have to manifest on the bottom floor first, causing the master shower to back up - and we didn't see anything like that. Okay, I can't argue with that, I don't know shit about plumbing. But come on, what are the odds of this being a coincidence? I pressed as hard as I could for alternative explanations and neither of them had anything. What made it most difficult to accept is that they seemed kind of oblivious to what kind of long shot it would take for these to be unrelated.

I solicit your hypotheses!