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Oct. 24th, 2005 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickToday I spent the morning underneath a trailer learning about the delights of an el-cheapo pipe solution called "Quest". It's plastic, polybutylene to be exact, and it isn't worth shit once it gets about ten years old. They used it in trailers (and may still) because it's cheaper than real pipe (pvc or copper) and sort of flexible unless you really need it to be.
Anyway, the problem with Quest polybutylene pipe is that it, er, dies. When it dies, it sometimes gets longitudinal splits and sometimes shears off of where it's attached to other things. Today we had a shear-off sort of failure. If this were on a straight section of pipe, we'd be done in five minutes, less crawling time. However, shear failures happen where it's attached to other things which is not generally a straight section of pipe. This one failed at a T intersection. Since stupid-ass plastic pipe is originally crimped together with crimping things we don't have, we use fucking compression fittings to hook all this fucking stuff back together. To fix0r this, we needed to replace the stupid crimping T with a compression fitting T, so we (and when I say we here, I mean me because I was the only person underneath the trailer, in the mud, with water running down my arms and sodden insulation insinuating itself between my shirt and the back of my neck. The involvement of all other parties was limited to standing outside in the rain, fetching tools and parts, and turning the water valve on and then off again when I started screaming.) had to unattach the other two parts of the T so that we could reattach all three of them to a newer, better T with compression fittings. When I was unattaching the third of the connections to the T, the polybutylene pipe that I was attempting to unattach did unattach, which you'd think would be a good thing but you'd be wrong. It unattached from another T about a foot and a half away from the one I was TRYING to get it unattached from. Another shear-type failure, you see. All the polybutylene pipe is the same age and if some of it starts failing, well, you know that the rest is just waiting for a more opportune moment. Fuck. So then I had to take out that T as well, because it was also the crimping type, and I took the pieces and myself and the tools and I crawled back out from under the trailer (It's like army guys go under the barbed wire. There isn't enough room under a trailer for a proper quadrupedal crawl even though it's called a crawlspace because that might mean you'd be able to limit the amount of mud on yourself and hell, where's the fun in that?) so that we could go to the hardware store for parts.
After the hardware store, we assembled the two Ts so that they were approximately correct for going together with the mess under the trailer. Bill did that part while I stood there and shivered because I was sort of damp and it was about fifty (and raining) out. Back underneath the trailer, I put the parts together. Some of the other pipes (big, fat sewer lines) were in the way of the pipes I needed. Some of the parts weren't long enough. I persevered. A couple of tries later, enough to fill and empty the pipes down my shirtsleeves sufficiently to wet the rest of me, I eventually got everything all together like it was supposed to go. By that time, the water from the pipes was starting to feel pleasantly warm. Bill turned the water back on and my pipes and fittings and shit were finally not leaking. YAY!! Unfortunately, the plastic pipe running out of the orthogonal part of the proximal T... where it went up into the floor, it was dripping from up there, from where I couldn't see it. Another opportune moment, I suppose. God, I love this plastic pipe. It's so much fun! I could tell that the pipe's heart wasn't in it, though, because I got the damn thing apart and salvaged my compression fittings AND it was the toilet supply line (easy to replace and not hidden in walls or inaccessible cupboards) so we were still done about five minutes before noon. (We'd started at about 8:30 AM.)
And that was pretty much my day at work. I went home, got a shower, changed clothes, took down the picnic tables, set up the voting booths, checked the antifreeze in my car, truck, and other truck, read the water meters, and otherwise fucked around until about 2:30PM. Then I called it a day and went to go refinish furniture, about which see next post.
Anyway, the problem with Quest polybutylene pipe is that it, er, dies. When it dies, it sometimes gets longitudinal splits and sometimes shears off of where it's attached to other things. Today we had a shear-off sort of failure. If this were on a straight section of pipe, we'd be done in five minutes, less crawling time. However, shear failures happen where it's attached to other things which is not generally a straight section of pipe. This one failed at a T intersection. Since stupid-ass plastic pipe is originally crimped together with crimping things we don't have, we use fucking compression fittings to hook all this fucking stuff back together. To fix0r this, we needed to replace the stupid crimping T with a compression fitting T, so we (and when I say we here, I mean me because I was the only person underneath the trailer, in the mud, with water running down my arms and sodden insulation insinuating itself between my shirt and the back of my neck. The involvement of all other parties was limited to standing outside in the rain, fetching tools and parts, and turning the water valve on and then off again when I started screaming.) had to unattach the other two parts of the T so that we could reattach all three of them to a newer, better T with compression fittings. When I was unattaching the third of the connections to the T, the polybutylene pipe that I was attempting to unattach did unattach, which you'd think would be a good thing but you'd be wrong. It unattached from another T about a foot and a half away from the one I was TRYING to get it unattached from. Another shear-type failure, you see. All the polybutylene pipe is the same age and if some of it starts failing, well, you know that the rest is just waiting for a more opportune moment. Fuck. So then I had to take out that T as well, because it was also the crimping type, and I took the pieces and myself and the tools and I crawled back out from under the trailer (It's like army guys go under the barbed wire. There isn't enough room under a trailer for a proper quadrupedal crawl even though it's called a crawlspace because that might mean you'd be able to limit the amount of mud on yourself and hell, where's the fun in that?) so that we could go to the hardware store for parts.
After the hardware store, we assembled the two Ts so that they were approximately correct for going together with the mess under the trailer. Bill did that part while I stood there and shivered because I was sort of damp and it was about fifty (and raining) out. Back underneath the trailer, I put the parts together. Some of the other pipes (big, fat sewer lines) were in the way of the pipes I needed. Some of the parts weren't long enough. I persevered. A couple of tries later, enough to fill and empty the pipes down my shirtsleeves sufficiently to wet the rest of me, I eventually got everything all together like it was supposed to go. By that time, the water from the pipes was starting to feel pleasantly warm. Bill turned the water back on and my pipes and fittings and shit were finally not leaking. YAY!! Unfortunately, the plastic pipe running out of the orthogonal part of the proximal T... where it went up into the floor, it was dripping from up there, from where I couldn't see it. Another opportune moment, I suppose. God, I love this plastic pipe. It's so much fun! I could tell that the pipe's heart wasn't in it, though, because I got the damn thing apart and salvaged my compression fittings AND it was the toilet supply line (easy to replace and not hidden in walls or inaccessible cupboards) so we were still done about five minutes before noon. (We'd started at about 8:30 AM.)
And that was pretty much my day at work. I went home, got a shower, changed clothes, took down the picnic tables, set up the voting booths, checked the antifreeze in my car, truck, and other truck, read the water meters, and otherwise fucked around until about 2:30PM. Then I called it a day and went to go refinish furniture, about which see next post.
