I received a call Saturday morning, three calls actually, while I was in the shower. They were from an unknown number. Since they didn't leave a message I figured it wasn't important. After I got out of the shower they called a fourth time. This time I picked up. They said the words I dread hearing: "It's raining in the hallway!"
I rushed over to Ware St. Thankfully it wasn't quite as bad as I feared. Part of the drain pipe for the second floor shower had eroded away, leaving a 1/4" hole in the pipe! Because of the old type of drainage system, every time the second floor took a shower the drain pipe filled up with water and some of the water poured out of the little hole.
The drain pipes were the old cast iron type, so simply replacing it was not something I could do easily. I finally decided since the drain pipe never has much water pressure, I could simply clamp some rubber over the hole and that should fix the problem. I went to the hardware store and bought a 1/2" rubber coupling with ring clamps, which looks this:
Since I didn't want to, or rather since I could not, disconnect the drain pipes, I had no way of slipping the coupling over the pipe to cover the hole. So instead, I removed the clamp rings and sliced the coupling down the middle. I had some duct tape in my truck, so I decided to wrap the hole on the pipe with duct tape first, hoping help lower the amount of water pressure exerted on the rubber coupling. I then placed my sliced rubber coupling around the drain pipe and then secured the clamps around it.
I asked the second floor tenants to turn on the shower and let it run for a few minutes. To my relief, no more leaks.