Adventures in Plumbing, Pt. Deux
Ahh, the sweet, sweet sound of water rushing unimpeded through the blown-out stub in my backyard! It fills my heart with joy.
Who knew that would ever happen?
Here’s how it did.
When last we left our hero, his easy-going nature was getting sorely freakin’ tested
I woke this morning at around 9 AM and found myself unable to go back to sleep. Visions of plumbing danced in my head (it’ll never replace sugar plums. And what are sugar plums, anyway? Face it, visions of plumbing won’t even replace visions of hippos dancing in tutus
I padded out back with wrench and assembly in hand. Only to find the PVC join I’d cemented onto the stub yesterday completely encased in ice.
Oh … dear. Apparently water had seeped out despite my having cut the supply off out on the sidewalk. Which brought to mind the distinctly unpleasant possibility that water standing in the pipes had been driven by freezing pressure. In all of my pipes. Had more of them ruptured over the night?
There’s a happy thought.
The only thing for it, of course, was to hike out front and turn the water back on. Except I found I couldn’t. The damn lid to the manhole was frozen in place. I banged on it in desultory wise for a bit with no success. I came back in to search unsuccessfully for the rubber hammer (useful item) I’d most recently used to crush walnuts for my chocolate chip cookies. It struck me that the damn valve might be frozen too, so I just gave up and headed back to bed.
Somewhere during this back and forthing Squeak provided some needed comic relief. She was lying on the end of the sofa that separates living room from dining room, which dominates the bottleneck passage between. It’s an especially good location from which to intimidate Emma, in which Squeak rejoices.
For some unknown reason Squeak got mad at me. This basically sums up our coming up on twelve-year relationship: the cat’s unaccountably Mad at Dad. So when I tried to pet her she first slashed at me with her claws and then actually tried to chomp me. The problem was, I was wearing this red plaid flannel winter shirt I bought at Costco in the Fall and then discovered was just too damn thick and heavy to wear as a shirt per se; it serves admirably as a kind of jacket or underlayer for a coat. It’s also too redoubtable for her claws to penetrate. Nor could her fangs find purchase. Which of course only served to piss her off more – as did my uproarious laughter at her frustration.
(This is basically the way her loving, solicitous brother Teej and I have learned to deal with Squeak: cherish her and find her amusing. The alternative is to kill the little shit.)
To my amazement, once in bed I didn’t lie there staring at the ceiling with eyes poaching like eggs in their sockets, obsessing on the possibility all my household pipes had burst, outside and (infinitely worse) in. TJ helped by coming to recline on a pillow beside me where I could soothe myself stroking his fur, which is soft plush orange, the way a red panda looks. I was able to muster at least a desultory doze.
(Yes, I did it. I confess: I used the word desultory twice in one post. And I’m glad. Glad! Hahahaha!)
Before drifting off I clicked on WeatherScan once or twice. The temperature was mid-twenties but rising. Even better, although it was partly cloudy, checking the sky outside indicate the cover was going to break. That’s one of the secrets to life in the high desert: the sun tends to heat things above the temperature of the ambient air. Ice melts in direct sunlight, sometimes, when it’s nominally still below freezing.
About 10:30 I woke to stay. Not really rested, but functional. More or less. To my delight, bright sunlight shone through my somewhat worn bedroom curtains. The sky had cleared!
I got bundled up and went out back again. The stub – still in shade – remained overflowing with ice. No problema: I’d realized earlier that I could still turn the water back on and use it in the household – increasingly urgent for certain purgative functions. The ice itself would cap the stub.
On the other hand the manhole out front had been exposed to the sun for a spell. The lid came freely off this time. To my relief the valve turned without resistance.
Then, of course, the test: would I see fountains spewing from the other outside faucets? Or worse, far worse, would I see no leaks only to be greeted on my return inside with the sound of water running – meaning I’d blown internal pipes?
No, and no. Whew!
So I went about my sundry businesses. Water flowed freely, but only where and when I desired. However, I continued to feel a certain mental itch, a desire to be done with the whole plumbing-repair thing.
Then about an hour ago, 1:20 PM or so, I heard water begin to mutter in the background. I peeked out the back door and sure enough, the errant faucet was gushing.
I switched off the water supply and headed out back with my wrench and replacement parts in hand. I had a bad few moments when the male thread on the metal pipe didn’t seem to want to mate with the female threads on the PVC join. I had taken the basic step of doing a trial assembly of all the components when I got back from the hardware store yesterday to make sure they actually fit, yes? I’m not overly handy; but as a trained machinist as well as decent self-taught home plumber that’s something I know is fundamental to do.
After a moment, though, the pipe started screwing in – smoothly, meaning I wasn’t cutting across threads. Holding the join immobile with the wrench to guard against torqueing it back off – that’d suck, wouldn’t it? – I hand-tightened the new faucet assembly. Then opening the valve a bit, I turned the water back on.
Everything seems to work and hold together so far. Granted, the new faucet could leak at every joint and it wouldn’t bother me: I need to keep water flowing through regardless. When I don’t have to keep a trickle going any longer it’ll be warm enough to work comfortably on touching it up, yes? Wonderful how things sometimes work.
So that’s another overly protracted and rambling episode in the continuing story of Adventures in Victorland. And that’s why I actually enjoyed hearing water flowing from a blown-out pipe.
So now it’s time to go luxuriate in a nice, hot bath. Believe me, it’s best for us all.