Apparently, when contractors building a house nail in the sheetrock to the studs, or the molding to the sheetrock, they just go “bang, bang, bang” with their air-powered nail guns not really paying attention to where the nail is going.
It is hits a stud, great! If it doesn’t… try, try again.
The end result is that they often (according to Roto Rooter) hit water pipes! Well, they did in our case too.
My poor, covered piano holds the section of pipe from where ours was leaking. Toward the middle, you can see discoloration — a darker brown area. That is from rust… as the nail rusted (from 4 years of water running over it) it finally broke through and left the hole.
Here is a close up of the nail hole itself. One little hole, in the pipe, in the wall and we have damage out the wazoo!