plumbing may be my worst skill
I guess this is just part of being a homeowner… plumbing. My patience is being tested. Thoroughly. While I feel pretty confident when it comes to carpentry, or electrical work, I’m woefully incompetent when it comes to plumbing. Maybe it’s just a confidence thing, but it certainly seems to be something that escapes me.
Why all the sudden rants about plumbing? Well, I’ll tell you. I have recently acquired a new kitchen faucet, which I love, from e-bay for less than half the cost than a retail shop. It’s brand new, beautiful, and actually quite simple to install. However, before I was able to install this, I had to tackle the water valves underneath the kitchen sink. The water valves you see, are a different size thread than the shiny new faucet. So, it was time to replace them. At least one of the them probably needed to be replaced anyway. It was very old anyway and the internal rubber gaskets were actually quite deteriorated.
Allow me to just get this off my chest. Water valves are designed in the seventh level of hell, by retarded monkeys. (hopefully I didn’t just offend all of my readers with that statement, especially my retarded monkey readers) They work by actually destroying the copper pipe that comes out of your wall. Thats right, destroying the damn pipe that comes out of the wall which are, I might add, impossible to replace without paying a big hairy sweaty man without a properly fitting belt who charges $100/hour. These valves actually compress a little brass ring which squeezes the copper pipe and deforms it such that the little brass ring becomes a permanent piece of pipe jewelry. Replacing these brass rings is not possible. Don’t do it. Take my word for it. Because no matter how careful you think you are, you’re gonna bend that pipe and then, you will never get a tight seal. Leak city.
I have spent two evenings and an entire morning on awkwardly crammed underneath the kitchen sink, arms reaching around pipes, cursing and grunting. Valves!!. I had to take a break – for fear that my anger would take over and I would go on a pipe-wrench rampage underneath the kitchen sink.
Curse you valves!! Curse you!!!
January 17th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Oh my gosh tell me about it! In our house, which is a fixer-upper, there are no water shut off vlaves under the kitchen sink. So, when we decide to replace the grody faucet that we have, we have to go to the street and turn off the water. The problem with that is that we have to have a certain tool to shut it off with. So, that means we have to call the city and ask them to come and shut the water off so that we can replace the silly faucet! We have been in the house for a year now, and still have yet to muster up the energy and time to do all of that. By the way… love the seventh layer of hell and retarted monkey stuff… I still have to clean the mess up after I laughed so hard!
January 19th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Laura – you can buy a “street key” for about $15 from a plumbing supply house and turn off your water yourself . . . here’s one online http://www.homeandbeyond.com/prod-0110000.html
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:49 am
I won’t even do plumbing in our family. I refuse. You would think that we Parmeters would have some inherited plumbing ability…. but maybe it skipped a generation? Oh wait… that would mean it would land on our generation.
January 30th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
I avoid the compression-ring style fittings. It’s easier to use a valve with a “sweat fitting”. Basically you coat the pieces in flux, put the fitting over the pipe, heat the joint until purple-ish and then add solder until it bleeds extra out the bottom. Badda Boom! Done! You don’t even need butt-crack! Be happy you have copper pipes in your house.
February 1st, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Yeah, the whole soldering thing is another skill that I haven’t quite figured out yet. Seems like I could mess that one up catastrophically as well.