Kelsey Carignan and her family woke up Oct. 9 to water pouring into the main floor and basement of the family's Walnut Grove home.
It was the last thing the family needed as Kelsey struggled with the return of her cancer and treatments.
“So at 5:30 in the morning it was less than five minutes of water,” Kelsey explained. “We came downstairs and it was like waterfalls were pouring through our built-ins, like water was flooding everything. And I ran downstairs to turn off the water and it flowed through the vents and out of the pot lights and just everywhere.”
The family didn't want to go through this again (this is their fourth leak), so the best solution was to renovate the house.
“The week of Christmas we received a call to quote for a plumbing pipe in the Walnut Grove area,” said Spencer Turley, owner of Murrayville Plumbing and Heating.
Turley worked out the quote, worth about $40,000, without realizing it was anything other than a routine project.
“I was talking to my wife and something kind of came to mind and then I brought up the name…” he said. “She had, you know, overcome the cancer, and then, about five years later, they found out she was staged.” 4. My wife and I talked about what we could do to help, and I contacted the BC Plumbing and Heating Association.”
Six companies agreed to help.
“It wasn’t a hard sell at all,” he said.
He contacted EMCO Langley about supplies.
“And immediately they said the same thing: ‘Send the materials list. We'll give you what we can,'” Turley said.
Langley Companies Murrayville Plumbing and Heating Ltd.; Bella Restoration Ltd.; Ring-Away Plumbing, Heating and Cooling; and Brian Mussato Plumbing and Heating worked with John Sadler Plumbing and Heating of Surrey and CIMA Mechanical to renovate the home.
Turley said all the companies wanted to bring the family back into their home because they had major issues with Kelsey's health in the coming months.
“We all put it together and within a week we had the house plumbed,” he said.
After the plumbing work, there is still restoration work to be done, such as restoring the kitchen cabinets, but the plumbing work had to be done, other work could be tackled.
Since the October flood, the family and their ground floor tenant have been forced to live elsewhere. The family expects to be back home in March. They have lived there for 12 years.
Kelsey, 38, looks forward to the most mundane household activities — “Probably watching a movie with my kids on the couch, making a meal, just the really, really simple things that you take for granted. Because those are the big things.”
Plumbing problems are common in this area of Langley. The water reacts with the zinc and older fixtures, causing leaks and failures.
“They had four floods and virtually every time they had a repair done, there was a leak in a different area of the house,” Turley said. “So their house had been completely destroyed by the flood that they probably had in October and they were waiting to figure out how to somehow rebuild the house, but to rebuild the house you basically have to replace. “ the entire plumbing and mechanical system.
“Even as we cut out the drywall, we exposed hundreds of pieces of hardware that were on the verge of breaking,” Turley noted.
The installers replaced all pipes and as many fittings as possible with materials that would not burst due to water. Turley said there are a few fittings that must be metal but are accessible for repairs. There is also a new tankless hot water system.
Due to a leak, the house previously required repairs costing about $35,000, and the family has spent a few thousand to fix two more leaks.
“So there was several floods in the area. Anyway, to make a long story short [the water] “We just ate our whistles from the inside out,” Kelsey said.
With the house soon repaired and restored, the family – husband Ryan and their sons Noah, 13, and 10-year-old Holden – can focus on Kelsey's care. The mother, who teaches yoga online from home, thought her battle with cancer was won.
“I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in October 2018. And I did chemotherapy, radiation, and a bilateral mastectomy. And it all went away, and I made it for five years.” And usually that's kind of the celebratory mark. “If you make it to the five-year mark, that means good things,” she explained. “But for me, at that five-year mark, we discovered that the cancer had actually spread to my liver and my lungs.”
She has been taking oral chemotherapy for about a year and a half, but recent tests show she is no longer responding as well to treatment. She will meet with doctors in mid-January to plan the next steps.
But to her, the plumbing and restoration companies coming together to help her is confirmation that there is so much good in the world and that people enjoy helping others.
“I find it very humbling to be on the receiving end of kindness. And it’s a lot easier to be on the giving side,” she said. “So I think at first I felt like I couldn't accept it, like it was just too much.”
These are the family members who are used to helping others, so it touches them that so many are helping them.
She viewed it as a form of balance – sometimes helping others, and sometimes helping others.
“And you know, it just makes you believe in miracles. It makes you believe in things so much bigger than yourself,” Kelsey said. “And I think there’s just so much hope, not just for me but for my family.”
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