Friday by early evening, I finished the plumbing repair issue I mentioned in Thursday's post. What kept me from getting to a post last night was testing out the installation to make sure nothing leaked. No one was more surprised than I was that nothing leaked.
An ironic thing here is that my right sidebar has a list of the most viewed posts of the last year, and for the last month or two, one of them has been a post about fixing my kitchen's water supply from August of '23. Not to be too redundant but I'm no plumber and of the various things I've had to do around the house, plumbing is my least favorite. Building bookshelves, or sets of shelves for books, magazines, whatever is much more interesting or fun for me.
In that article, I borrowed a quote that's sort of at the heart of the issue. Someone once told me that "there's nothing 3/4" about a 3/4" pipe," which is true but it's worse than that. There are multiple sizes of pipes or hoses and there are many different connectors for each one. You almost need to have done this sort of work to know how to do it.
The problem I got finished with last night started out the weekend before Thanksgiving, November 23rd, and it was minor thing. The kind of thing you have to be affected with anal-retentiveness to even be aware of. In our bathroom (it's an old house and the old style 3 bedroom/ 2 bathroom) I noticed that the little screen on the bottom of the faucet - called an aerator - started squirting some water toward the base of the faucet. I've replaced those before and the procedure is to unscrew the old one and screw in a new one. I even had a cardboard piece from the package a new one had come in, so I knew what should fit (and note the builtin doubt that made me write "I knew what should fit" rather than I knew what would fit). It was 15/16" x 27.
Almost immediately, the threads on the old one sheared off and the threaded portion remained in the faucet's spout. I spent from the Monday before Thanksgiving until last Monday, 12/15 trying to get that out. I finally decided to just replace the faucet primarily because we don't remember when we put that faucet in, but it was probably around 1990. How much longer will it last? Will there be a bad valve next? Something else? We went with this one because its primary advantage is the spout is farther up and over the sink, making it easier to wash hands.
Removal was pretty straightforward, but I made a newbie mistake that had me make another trip up to a hardware store. I assumed that the existing hoses would fit. It turned out they were around 1/2" too short to connect the faucet to the water supply, and a trip to the store yesterday led me to something like this. The original hoses were vinyl and cut with no slack whatsoever, and the replacement hardware making the connection a little farther from the house than where it had been attached is what led them to be too short. The new hoses had the opposite problem of being longer and having to be worked with to find a way to curl them up and put the faucet end where it needed to be.
But the problem with working on stuff like this is access. It's all close to the back wall of the cabinet with the sink on top, and I'm too big to get in there comfortably. The best thing one can say about any task like this is that it's done.
The Delta faucet we chose.
At least it was old (probably) enough to have metal nuts under the sink. The new plastic ones have a bad habit of 'mushing' when you try to remove them.
ReplyDeleteIf they do, pull the hoses off of the bottom, then find a hole-saw that will just fit over the male threads underneath (you need about a 1" hole-saw). Use this to carefully cut through the nut from underneath until the 'outside' falls off. This should let the remnant of the nut fit up through the hole in the sink...
I hate plumbing. I can do it, the actual work is usually really simple. It's just the contortions and twistings and injuries to the fingers that makes me hate it.
ReplyDeleteMy main problem, besides being fat, is I have unnaturally big hands. Wide palms and extra-long fingers. I have yet to find a pair of gloves that fit me decently. If they fit over my palms then the fingers are too short. Long enough fingers and the palm of the glove is too narrow.
So my fingers take damage, all while I'm in a position that would be difficult for a Cirque du Soleil performer. And just when I get in position, yep, gotta move back out because something's missing or not right or the wife's calling me to 'help' me with 'helpful' suggestions.
I swear, next time I'm going to the local zoo and 'borrowing' their trank gun.
"So my fingers take damage, all while I'm in a position that would be difficult for a Cirque du Soleil performer. And just when I get in position, yep, gotta move back out because something's missing or not right or the wife's calling me to 'help' me with 'helpful' suggestions." Excellent description, although I don't get the last one.
DeleteI have at least a dozen little scabs and red streaks that look like tiny cuts and part of the reason for that is I rarely ever wear work gloves for jobs like this. Hacking back my neighbor's "laceration bushes" (my name for bougainvilleas)? Sign me up for the most puncture resistant gloves there are. For this, I need the feeling in my fingertips to tell me if the threading feels right because of the twistings and contortions needed for working in spaces my hands barely fit in. A lot of things are done by feel because of working in those tiny spaces.
The latest thing is I've had a finger go crooked - osteoarthritis. Back in the '90s, I had the index and pinky fingers on both hands do that. The last segment of each of those four fingers pointed toward a centerline a little, then they stopped hurting. This past summer, the last segment of my left hand's "bird finger" started growing an arthritic joint that makes it curve to the left like a small bow, and it hasn't stopped. It's curved more than the two fingers on that hand that curved back then. Hurts almost constantly, it's just that sometimes it hurts more than others.
I feel your pain, SiG.
ReplyDeleteI replaced the kitchen faucet last spring after determining I couldn't find a cartridge to stop it from leaking. Corrosion around the mounting posts and the sink attaching hardware made pulling the faulty unit off impossible. To make matters worse, our hard water made the shut-off valves leak when rotated - so, those had to be replaced as well.
Long story shortened: After cutting the faucet assembly off with a Sawzall and 4 1/2" grinder, it took about four trips to the hardware store for fittings and hardware I didn't have;
Needless to say, I hate working on sinks.
Leigh
Whitehall, NY
I worked for a plumber for a while - learned a lot. Got used to pipe sizes too - in some cases, it's a question of OD vs. ID. A basin wrench is among the most useful tools I've owned for plumbing, and I did a few faucet replacements before owning one. Both the faucets in my apartment need replacement, but I haven't told the landlord, because for things like this, because I'm the guy who does the work anyway. My landlord is, I think, 15 or so years older than I, and I'm no Spring chicken either. Getting myself positioned to do faucets will be a challenge. Another challenge would be convincing him to buy something a little better than the cheapest thing at Home Depot. I'd prefer more clearance in height of the spout too.
ReplyDeleteHaving an aerator break is not a problem I've run across. At the least, removing the faucet would be a first step to extracting the stub, and I'd be very tempted to just replace the whole thing too.
- jed
We replaced our kitchen sink faucet a few months back, if my wife hadn't been available I'd never completed it. I don't have long enough arms...
ReplyDeleteNow I need to replace the stopper baskets in that same sink. Yea.
Ugh ... replaced all the bathroom faucets in our house over the past year. Feel your pain. One surprisingly useful item during the process was a cat litter pan - sat very nicely in the cabinet and caught all the mess from 'above'. It was low enough it didn't interfere with the work. And also good lighting.
ReplyDeletethe first house we owned was a huge three-story (with attic 12' peak and full basement mostly 8') monstrosity whose foundation had been poured sometime in the 19th C located in SW LI. needless to say it had plumbing dating from when Hector was a pup. yes! I also re-wired the entire house which still had wiring dating from the turn of the century, but that was all before I turned 45 and was still flexible enough to bend over backwards and kiss my (uh!) heels.
ReplyDeleteI still wake up in a sweat dreaming about changing the toilet in the 2½ floor landing bathroom.
There is a reason plumber charge so much: it's often worth it if you can afford it.
ReplyDeleteDad was a Master Plumber. I have a bunch of his tools. I know my limits; money takes over where knowledge fails.
We've used professionals for this sort of thing regularly, and I have plenty of respect for plumbers as well as pretty much all professionals who build and keep homes working properly. The obvious trade to me was time vs. money and the $100 worth of parts costing $300 to have installed.
DeleteAs for you next question, the 8µs discrepancy, I'd feel more comfortable if I had some numbers they claim for the service, but I don't have anything on that. At 186,000 miles/second, that's about 1.5 miles but that's nothing compared to the path length going up to the ionosphere and back down a couple of times.
SiG: Any thoughts on WWV's power outage? Does an 8 µs discrepancy render the service unusable?
ReplyDelete