If it is Simple, It will be Changed ~ rant

[digitS']

Have you tried to change a washer in a bathroom faucet lately? Shoot.

I started to pull the thing out a couple months ago when I noticed that water was escaping out from under the handle when I turned on the hot water. Pulled things out from under the sink so that I could reach the shut-off valve. Wouldn't turn! Shoot. What's this? The sink is only a couple years old - shut-off valve is already corroded where it won't turn?

Shoot. Today I learn: Left hand valve. Why? The cold water is right hand - I procrastinated 2 months because I thought I needed a day when DW was gone & I could turn off the water to the entire house.

Shoot. Pulled the valve core out and it is like nothing I've ever seen before! Well, there is no washer for the valve seat but there are 2 o-rings on the valve stem . . . off to plumbing supply. Can't quite see in the packages but they look like the right size.

Shoot. One was the right size, sort of. Decided to put the other old one back and hope for the best. Shoot. Can't get the packing nut down far enuf for it to thread on. Or, so I thought. Must be doing something wrong. Pulled the cold water valve out . . . (See where this might be going?)

Shoot. Wasn't doing anything wrong! But, I may have messed with the nut long enuf that I damaged the threads. Switched the one nut with the other - no problem. Now to see if replacing one o-ring and not the other will stop the leak . . . yep.

DW will come home and think "Well, it is about time he got that little problem fixed." Shoot. I thought I might have to buy an entire new faucet because an o-ring was leaking. Both o-rings are very thin and the new one that wouldn't fit was the right diameter just the wrong thickness. What? Is this aeronautics now?

Shoot Steve

 

[catjac1975]

When my husband and I were newlyweds we were new home owners. (Of our 100 year old fixer upper) We had a dripping kitchen faucet. Having seen my father fix everything we decided to change the washer and stop the drip. There was not shutoff under the sink. We looked at the faucet and decided we could take off the handle without a problem because the handles were on the side and the water came out frontwards.
Reminder: we were 20 somethings. So we loosened the handle and a geyser came out the faucet and hit the ceiling. I was laughing so hard I was incapacitated and could not even speak. I'm sure my husband was cursing at me but soon we were both laughing hysterically. Somehow he got the handle back on and our drip was now a steady stream of waterIt was just like an old Lucile Ball show.
Of course it was at night! Being a new teacher in town he had a list of students and somehow knew which one had a Dad that was a plumber who came out and showed us where the shutoff was. Well, it was a "modern" washer less faucet. No washer, 10cents, but a valve, $5. The plumber gave us quite a lecture. We had to wait to use the sink until the next day when the valve was purchased and the plumber returned. We are DIYers to this day. But, WE ALWAYS HIRE A PLUMBER!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Steve, they havent changed it, theyve improved it. You cant leave a design alone that is simple and easy to fix. How can you call that progress?

Cat, I do some plumbing myself but I seriously dont like doing it. I recently replaced the guts of a commode. Of course the people that built this house put in the variety that the generic stuff at Ace Hardware doesnt fit. The hardware store owner was nice enough to tell me where the specialty plumbing supply is located. First time I needed to know that since we moved here in 2007.

I need to replumb under the kitchen sink and pack an outdoor spigot. Im procrastinating on both of those, waiting for one more thing to go wrong. Then Im calling a plumber.

 

[897tgigvib]

Digit, I kinda think if you bought a new faucet that putting the new faucet into the present sink in would become a debacle.

Just get a new sink, all nice n shiny.

Now then course ya hafta install the new sink!

SHOOT!

Wallp, a whole new bathroom and kitchen will really make your wife happy!

Course, ya gotsta install the new bathroom and new kitchen...

SHOOT!

After trying that you might realize that remodelling the whole house is really the best plan anyway.

Course you'll have to order up loads of siding, miles of 600v high capacity wiring, new circuit breakers, oh and those newfangled PEX plumbing tubes, the new water heater, oh, and nice fat insulation...and take everything apart...

But now ya hafta put it all together...

SHOOT!!!

Ya know, isn't there a house for sale down the road?

...a washer... or ...a new house
Decisions decisions!

 

[NwMtGardener]

Oh my gosh, i sympathize with all those stories!!! Plumbing will be the death of us in this house, everything else had been upgraded before we bought this house, except the plumbing. Apparently it doesnt have those air vent thingies, and our crawl space is a NIGHTMARE. Oh, and that's where the only water shutoff to the majority of appliances is, in the crawl space.

About a month ago, we spent several days working on minor leaky kitchen faucet and Major leaking drain from the clothes washer. I swear they both stopped leaking for, like, 3 days, then right back to their old behavior. So frustrating!!! I'm almost embarrassed to admit, my grandfather was a plumber but i dont know the first thing about it really (or so i keep telling my husband...).

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i'm happy we have a friend who's a master plumber. this house has had it's issues, one being the lack of upkeep my FIL should have been doing for the 35+ years he had owned it. when we pulled the sink in the kitchen our friend saw that it was corroded on the underside and the pvc pipes he had replaced in 2008 had been black. then we found a couple of bottles of muratic acid in the back room and under the sink. seems that stuff being used as a drain cleaner can break down the plastic in the pvc and eats away at the metal in the sink. :/

we pulled the sink and found a steal of a deal on craigslist for a decent sink that came with the faucet. friend goes to hook it up, gets the hole cut into the new counter top, does a fabulous job of it all and then the faucet wouldn't work. pulled it apart and found it was missing 1 part and another cheap plastic bit was broken. SHOOT! had to go get a new one.

a month before we are set to move in here the water heater breaks and pouring the water out the bottom. SHOOT! had to get a new one.

 

[baymule]

Plumbing is the bane of home ownership. I feel for ya on the faucet o rings, Steve. We used to have a REAL hardware store here that carried all those little kinds of things. I could turn off the water, take the faucet apart and take the pieces to the hardware store. I got what I wanted and came back home and put it all back together. TaDa! But those days are gone. We now have a Lowes and all the fix it stuff is in little packages that of course I can't match up the o ring to see if it is the right size. Phooey.

And replacing the guts in a toilet tank is a real blast too. Low flow, low flush, no float, float, tall, short, the options are mind boggling. I just want to pee for goodness sakes!

3 years ago the galvanized plumbing in the ceiling gave up the ghost, burst while we were at work, the ceiling caved in and water romped all over the house before taking a right turn and flowing out the front door to the street. We were 10 days with no water. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ later, we had brand new pex plumbing throughout the house. New pipe from the water meter to the last faucet. And new faucets everywhere too. row

We were fortunate in that we didn't have to wait for the insurance to pay damages. We called the plumbers and got the process started, finished and paid for before we got the insurance check. If we would had to wait on the money, we would have been without water for weeks. We tore out sheetrock, ceilings, flooring, and the fun of putting it all back together........NOT!!

It's almost enough to drive you to having an outhouse out back and a hand pump well right close to the kitchen............buuuuuut not quite.

 

[digitS']

The cabin I built, Bay, it only had one sink. There was my mirror above it, there in the kitchen. Toothbrush.

The little one-holer was out in a 2nd growth of little evergreens. Facing that-a-way.

I remember as a kid visiting our beekeeper. That house had a hand pump right at the kitchen sink. That was their water, from a cistern under the floor.

When I worked at the greenhouse, plumbing jobs were always coming up. It was kind of on an "industrial scale" tho'. I didn't have to worry much about water spilling or working under the bathtub . There were steam pipes all over the place and sometimes, things had to be done quick. Shutting off the steam valves to one of the houses when it was below zero - oh boy, you could feel that temperature begin to drop! Haven't touch anything like that in nearly 30 years.

Eccentric. Yeah, that new bathroom sink valve is kind of an eccentric. I thought I knew the meaning of that word until I did plumbing in the commercial greenhouse. "Eccentric" means that it doesn't line up to a center. There are pipe fittings known as "eccentrics." Made that way.

Steve

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

oh yeah, almost forgot the fiasco with the pipes coming from the street!
this house from the time my dh and his family moved in, never had a lot of water pressure. so we had out friend take a look at it. come to find out someone in the process of fixing the stone foundation had poured concrete over the inside shutoff valve and it rusted too, wasn't leaking though. so had to get the city in to take care of replacing that. didn't help the water pressure so onto checking the flow from the road.......city pulls their plans and found out the last time the pipe from the street to the house was recorded as put in was 1934! as they go to dig it up they found a HUGE discrepancy with the metal the pipe was made out of. it was supposed to be brass, instead rusted steel that was letting a trickle of water get to the house. before they got to pull up that pipe one of the workers in the backhoe hit something and it turned and knocked out one of the guys standing in the hole, and one of the other guys got scraped. good thing we're across from the hospital. a week later they came back and re did the hole and fixed the issue. charged us over $500! SHOOT!

 

[Smart Red]

The first house we built had cast iron drain pipe and threaded pipes for the water. I learned to pound in the oakum and lead the ten foot sections. I learned to cut and thread the water pipes and make nipples of the exact length. By the second house, PVC drains and copper water pipes were the norm. I learned to clean and glue the drain pipe and clean and solder the copper. DH was able to do it all and was - as always - my best teacher. Not one leak (so far) in our house of nearly 40 years.

Even though we knew how to do the work, we needed to hire a plumber for the addition on an apartment we built in town. The first two runs the plumber put in were exactly where DH told him NOT to put water pipes. That was where we were going to run the cold air return. Of the other copper joints, fully half of them leaked. DH called the plumber back to correct the three worst joints, re-soldered the rest himself and moved the pipes in the middle of the cold air return space to another place once it had been inspected.

Now we're working on DS's house and bringing the e- and plumbing up to present code. Here the water pipe is running through clear hoses and special joints that are not supposed to ever freeze and burst as copper would. Aside from the cost of the tools needed to spread and attach the water pipe, it is so much easier than the first or even the second house to plumb.

We've had leaks - big and small - (and horrible leak stories) in some of the houses we have worked on or re-habbed, and everything from Winnie the Pooh plugging toilets and disposable diapers stuck deep into drain pipes that needed roto-rooting. Of course any house in need of work needed a new bathroom and kitchen first.