If it's not one thing, it's another

Last night, some time after two a.m., I was awakened by the sound of... nothing. The exhaust fan in the loft had stopped. I opened my eyes and all was black. There were no digital clocks and no glow from the nightlights in the stairwell. The power had obviously gone out. Uh-oh.

Looking on the bright side: now we have a chance to clean under and behind the appliances.

Then I heard some strange noises coming from downstairs, so I got up and carefully felt my way down the pitch-black stairs and to the den to get a flashlight. The strange noise turned out to be water dripping onto the floor in the entry on the ground floor. The water was coming from the ceiling above, just under the spot in the kitchen where the dishwasher sits. The dishwasher was programmed to run over night. It had sprung a leak and shorted out an electrical circuit thereby tripping the master breaker, cutting off the power to the entire house.

So there we were, in our underwear at 02h30 in the morning, trying with a flashlight to find the leak in the kitchen. The floor under the sink was dry. I saw a little water under the stove (next to the dishwasher). There was also a little water sitting inside the dishwasher itself. We emptied the machine and pulled it out away from the wall. Sure enough, the floor was wet underneath it, but it wasn't really a flood and I noticed that the dripping into the room below had stopped. I unplugged the dishwasher and threw some old towels down on the floor to soak up the water. I did the same in the entry below. Then I flipped the breaker back on and the power returned.

After a few minutes of waiting to make sure everything was ok, we went back to bed for a few more hours. Now we have a chore this morning: to get the dishwasher out of its spot for inspection and (maybe) repair. First I have to disconnect the adjacent stove from power and gas and pull it out as well. The leak could either be in the dishwasher's drain hose or the pump itself. The water supply hose is not leaking. If it were, there would still be water flowing, but there isn't. We'll probably call the plumber to come take a look. Worst-case scenario is that we'll need a new dishwasher. This one is fifteen years old now.