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Dec. 6th, 2006 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickBear: 1
Me: 0
There is probably nothing I hate more than looking a total fucking idiot in front of other people. *sigh* It's a pity that I have the sort of job where I get to look like a total fucking idiot in front of other people, but life is like that and mostly so when others are watching.
Today, SJ called to say that there was a weird noise coming from the pipes in her house. Right. Pipes do not generally make noise. I figured that maybe the radiators needed to be bled. That's easy enough to fix, but not something particularly urgent, so I called SJ and asked if it was an emergency thing or if it could wait until 3, when I would be in town showing an apartment. She said it sounded like a motor or something. (Pipes do not have motors on them except for the circulator pump on hot-water heating systems like radiators or hot-water baseboard. Ordinary municipal plumbing does not have per-household means of generating water pressure.) She also said it was kind of an urgent thing.
Whatever. So I drive there and open the front door and there's a hum going on. It's a pretty substantial hum, sounds like, well, like a motor. I investigate. This is not a problem that involves radiators needing to be bled. Matter of fact, I have no fucking idea what the dealio is. None. It's a very Tell-Tale Heart sort of a hum, though, literally sounds like something's going to fucking explode Right Now, John!
In the upstairs bathroom, the tub faucet is vibrate-y in my hand. Holding onto it, I can feel the hum from the nonexistant motor. On a hunch, I turn the cold water faucet on. The hum goes away. I turn the cold water off. The hum comes back after a bit. WTF? Lather, rinse, repeat. Water on -> no hum. Water off -> Return of the hum. Revenge of the hum. The hum strikes back. To make sure that this isn't a fluke, I try it about five or six times. Right. We've seriously got a repeatable phenomenon going on, here.
So I sit there, on the side of the tub, and try to figure out what the fuck is up with this hum in the vibratey pipes. Plumbing, it should not sing. It should not resonate. It's supposed to be fucking quiet.
While I'm sitting there, I notice that the toilet fill valve isn't quite all the way shut off. It's running just a wee bit, a teeny bit, and tipping over into the overflow valve. It's hardly a trickle, really, and I can barely hear it over The Hum (tm). I unstack the stuff off the back of the toilet and remove the lid and gaze into the murky toilet water at the most unusual fill-valve setup I have ever seen. It's bizarre. It's probably older than I am, an Eljer brand, in copper and brass. Even the little hose for the filling-up water is made of metal. Everything has bizarre little L-shaped levers to attach it to everything else. It's weird... but it has a ball float. I know how to fixor. I grab the ball float and pull it up slightly, just enough for the contraption to shut off fully, and voila! The hum is gone. It's banished. (In your mental narrative voice, you say that like in Romeo and Juliet -- banish-ed.) Wotcha. Okay. The problem, the thing that is making the pipes sing in Tocatta and Fugue, is that the toilet valve ain't shutting off right. I test this theory a couple more times by playing with the fill valve in the toilet. Jiggle the handle is a way of life around here, really.
There is, obviously, no motor. There's a busted fill valve that leaks a wee bit, just a teeny wee bit, and that's making the pipes go all harmonic.
I went to the hardware store and, because it was a weird-ass old toilet with some funky works inside, I asked for help. The helpful hardware man allowed as how it sounded like an Eljer and that I should replace the entire thing with the nifty plastic jobbie from Fluidmaster. Since I'd installed those before, I was amenable to that. Fluidmasters are easy to install and they fucking work and I like 'em. I took the Fluidmaster and a supply line back to SJ's.
I discovered at this point that there was no water shut-off valve for the upstairs toilet at SJ's house. I didn't think to look for this previously because I'd never, until that moment, met a toilet without a fucking shut-off valve. Learn something new every day, I guess. *sigh* I shut off the water in the basement, a nontrivial operation involving five miles of pipe and something like six gate valves, none of them labled. Because I can't figure out what pipes go where, I shut off all the water to everywhere. Then I go back up the two flights of stairs to the toilet that is starring in this narrative. (Every time we hit a new paragraph, just imagine me running up and down the stairs once for good measure. That'll give you a realistic perception of the number of times I did the stairs without me having to type it each time.)
I blew the next hour and a half trying to remove the Eljer fill valve crap from the tank. I have pretty good hand strength for a girl, really I do, but I had a hell of a time with this shit. I did get it undone eventually without drenching the floor worse than any other toilet I've ever taken a fill valve out of. It is at this juncture that I look at the supply line. The supply line is chromed brass with a flanged lip. I know, looking at it, that there is absolutely no fucking way that I am going to be able to attach the Fluidmaster in a way that does not leak. I've done these before. The nice people at Fluidmaster give you a washer that alleges the ability to connect flanged supply lines to their shit, but I've never, ever seen a case where that worked. Never. You can tighten and tighten and tighten until there is no more tightening to be had and the water will still bubble up around the fucking fitting and run down the supply line over your fucking knuckles. You can flip the cone-shaped washer over and use it opposite the printed directions. It'll leak. You can go buy your own washer of a more suitable size from the local hardware. That will leak too. The correct option when presented with a flanged supply line is to replace the fucking supply line from the shut-off valve to the Fluidmaster, using one of those nice flexi cable things that works every time.
At this juncture, please refer back to the paragraph two paragraphs ago. Note the part about the lack of a shut-off valve. While you're at it, note "chromed brass" in the previous paragraph and translate that into "fits no standard size compression fitting".
I try the flanged fitting. I try the washer. It leaks. I tighten it up a lot . It still leaks. I retry it. It leaks. (Each of those sentences is a trip up and then down the stairs.) There is water falling through the bathroom floor into the kitchen as if it is raining indoors. That's the amount of leaking we're talking, here. This isn't a subtle drip-drip-drip suitable for torture. This is a cloudburst in the kitchen. I tighten it a lot, really, a lot. I know that, in the future, as I am explaining my complete and total failure, I will be asked if I tried hard enough to tighten the fitting. I know this as surely as I know that the sun rises in the east. So I tighten a whole fucking lot, just to be sure. It still leaks. A lot.
I go back to the hardware store and explain my problem. The hardware store tells me to cut the pipe (using a hacksaw because the pipe cutter won't do brass without a nonstandard blade) and to put threads on the pipe using the handheld thread-cutting-thing that they will loan me (it's a very good hardware store) and then to screw on this shut-off valve here and then Bob's your uncle! (Bob is not my uncle.)
I cut the pipe. I'm going to skim over how much fun it is to cut through a brass pipe with half an inch of draw for the saw blade because I'm trying hard to repress that memory myself. I remove the piece of dead pipe, which is attached to the fluidmaster via a fitting that I have tightened beyond my ability to unscrew it. I wind up cutting the plastic threaded part of the fluidmaster to get it out of the fucking toilet. It is easier to saw through plastic than it is to saw through brass, but there's still only half an inch of draw for the hacksaw. I hate my life. My shoulders are burning. Toilets are not conveniently located -- usually they're crammed in close quarters and they NEVER have enough room around them to work on the important parts. The important parts are invariably next to the tub or the sink basin so that you have maybe a foot of space to swing tools and things. It sucks... but I persevere and I prevail.
Next, I get the thread-cutting-thing working and it is kind of neat. It's got a rachet so that you don't need much room to work and a pretty huge (like two feet) lever arm so you don't have to pull very hard to generate an amazing amount of torque (for cutting the threads, natch) and that's all going along swimmingly until the point where the elbow joint on the supply line, the elbow joint that is below floor level, gives way. I realize that elbow joints on fucking plumbing are not supposed to do that, but apparently there were amazing amounts of torque lashing around the place. Who knew?
At this point, I gave up and went home. SJ's water is still shut off. Tomorrow morning, I will have to face my dad (back from vacation) and admit that I'm too fucking incompetent to replace a goddamned fucking toilet fill valve... and then I will have to ask for help to fix what I have fucked up. Damn. I wonder if I can stay home sick...?
Me: 0
There is probably nothing I hate more than looking a total fucking idiot in front of other people. *sigh* It's a pity that I have the sort of job where I get to look like a total fucking idiot in front of other people, but life is like that and mostly so when others are watching.
Today, SJ called to say that there was a weird noise coming from the pipes in her house. Right. Pipes do not generally make noise. I figured that maybe the radiators needed to be bled. That's easy enough to fix, but not something particularly urgent, so I called SJ and asked if it was an emergency thing or if it could wait until 3, when I would be in town showing an apartment. She said it sounded like a motor or something. (Pipes do not have motors on them except for the circulator pump on hot-water heating systems like radiators or hot-water baseboard. Ordinary municipal plumbing does not have per-household means of generating water pressure.) She also said it was kind of an urgent thing.
Whatever. So I drive there and open the front door and there's a hum going on. It's a pretty substantial hum, sounds like, well, like a motor. I investigate. This is not a problem that involves radiators needing to be bled. Matter of fact, I have no fucking idea what the dealio is. None. It's a very Tell-Tale Heart sort of a hum, though, literally sounds like something's going to fucking explode Right Now, John!
In the upstairs bathroom, the tub faucet is vibrate-y in my hand. Holding onto it, I can feel the hum from the nonexistant motor. On a hunch, I turn the cold water faucet on. The hum goes away. I turn the cold water off. The hum comes back after a bit. WTF? Lather, rinse, repeat. Water on -> no hum. Water off -> Return of the hum. Revenge of the hum. The hum strikes back. To make sure that this isn't a fluke, I try it about five or six times. Right. We've seriously got a repeatable phenomenon going on, here.
So I sit there, on the side of the tub, and try to figure out what the fuck is up with this hum in the vibratey pipes. Plumbing, it should not sing. It should not resonate. It's supposed to be fucking quiet.
While I'm sitting there, I notice that the toilet fill valve isn't quite all the way shut off. It's running just a wee bit, a teeny bit, and tipping over into the overflow valve. It's hardly a trickle, really, and I can barely hear it over The Hum (tm). I unstack the stuff off the back of the toilet and remove the lid and gaze into the murky toilet water at the most unusual fill-valve setup I have ever seen. It's bizarre. It's probably older than I am, an Eljer brand, in copper and brass. Even the little hose for the filling-up water is made of metal. Everything has bizarre little L-shaped levers to attach it to everything else. It's weird... but it has a ball float. I know how to fixor. I grab the ball float and pull it up slightly, just enough for the contraption to shut off fully, and voila! The hum is gone. It's banished. (In your mental narrative voice, you say that like in Romeo and Juliet -- banish-ed.) Wotcha. Okay. The problem, the thing that is making the pipes sing in Tocatta and Fugue, is that the toilet valve ain't shutting off right. I test this theory a couple more times by playing with the fill valve in the toilet. Jiggle the handle is a way of life around here, really.
There is, obviously, no motor. There's a busted fill valve that leaks a wee bit, just a teeny wee bit, and that's making the pipes go all harmonic.
I went to the hardware store and, because it was a weird-ass old toilet with some funky works inside, I asked for help. The helpful hardware man allowed as how it sounded like an Eljer and that I should replace the entire thing with the nifty plastic jobbie from Fluidmaster. Since I'd installed those before, I was amenable to that. Fluidmasters are easy to install and they fucking work and I like 'em. I took the Fluidmaster and a supply line back to SJ's.
I discovered at this point that there was no water shut-off valve for the upstairs toilet at SJ's house. I didn't think to look for this previously because I'd never, until that moment, met a toilet without a fucking shut-off valve. Learn something new every day, I guess. *sigh* I shut off the water in the basement, a nontrivial operation involving five miles of pipe and something like six gate valves, none of them labled. Because I can't figure out what pipes go where, I shut off all the water to everywhere. Then I go back up the two flights of stairs to the toilet that is starring in this narrative. (Every time we hit a new paragraph, just imagine me running up and down the stairs once for good measure. That'll give you a realistic perception of the number of times I did the stairs without me having to type it each time.)
I blew the next hour and a half trying to remove the Eljer fill valve crap from the tank. I have pretty good hand strength for a girl, really I do, but I had a hell of a time with this shit. I did get it undone eventually without drenching the floor worse than any other toilet I've ever taken a fill valve out of. It is at this juncture that I look at the supply line. The supply line is chromed brass with a flanged lip. I know, looking at it, that there is absolutely no fucking way that I am going to be able to attach the Fluidmaster in a way that does not leak. I've done these before. The nice people at Fluidmaster give you a washer that alleges the ability to connect flanged supply lines to their shit, but I've never, ever seen a case where that worked. Never. You can tighten and tighten and tighten until there is no more tightening to be had and the water will still bubble up around the fucking fitting and run down the supply line over your fucking knuckles. You can flip the cone-shaped washer over and use it opposite the printed directions. It'll leak. You can go buy your own washer of a more suitable size from the local hardware. That will leak too. The correct option when presented with a flanged supply line is to replace the fucking supply line from the shut-off valve to the Fluidmaster, using one of those nice flexi cable things that works every time.
At this juncture, please refer back to the paragraph two paragraphs ago. Note the part about the lack of a shut-off valve. While you're at it, note "chromed brass" in the previous paragraph and translate that into "fits no standard size compression fitting".
I try the flanged fitting. I try the washer. It leaks. I tighten it up a lot . It still leaks. I retry it. It leaks. (Each of those sentences is a trip up and then down the stairs.) There is water falling through the bathroom floor into the kitchen as if it is raining indoors. That's the amount of leaking we're talking, here. This isn't a subtle drip-drip-drip suitable for torture. This is a cloudburst in the kitchen. I tighten it a lot, really, a lot. I know that, in the future, as I am explaining my complete and total failure, I will be asked if I tried hard enough to tighten the fitting. I know this as surely as I know that the sun rises in the east. So I tighten a whole fucking lot, just to be sure. It still leaks. A lot.
I go back to the hardware store and explain my problem. The hardware store tells me to cut the pipe (using a hacksaw because the pipe cutter won't do brass without a nonstandard blade) and to put threads on the pipe using the handheld thread-cutting-thing that they will loan me (it's a very good hardware store) and then to screw on this shut-off valve here and then Bob's your uncle! (Bob is not my uncle.)
I cut the pipe. I'm going to skim over how much fun it is to cut through a brass pipe with half an inch of draw for the saw blade because I'm trying hard to repress that memory myself. I remove the piece of dead pipe, which is attached to the fluidmaster via a fitting that I have tightened beyond my ability to unscrew it. I wind up cutting the plastic threaded part of the fluidmaster to get it out of the fucking toilet. It is easier to saw through plastic than it is to saw through brass, but there's still only half an inch of draw for the hacksaw. I hate my life. My shoulders are burning. Toilets are not conveniently located -- usually they're crammed in close quarters and they NEVER have enough room around them to work on the important parts. The important parts are invariably next to the tub or the sink basin so that you have maybe a foot of space to swing tools and things. It sucks... but I persevere and I prevail.
Next, I get the thread-cutting-thing working and it is kind of neat. It's got a rachet so that you don't need much room to work and a pretty huge (like two feet) lever arm so you don't have to pull very hard to generate an amazing amount of torque (for cutting the threads, natch) and that's all going along swimmingly until the point where the elbow joint on the supply line, the elbow joint that is below floor level, gives way. I realize that elbow joints on fucking plumbing are not supposed to do that, but apparently there were amazing amounts of torque lashing around the place. Who knew?
At this point, I gave up and went home. SJ's water is still shut off. Tomorrow morning, I will have to face my dad (back from vacation) and admit that I'm too fucking incompetent to replace a goddamned fucking toilet fill valve... and then I will have to ask for help to fix what I have fucked up. Damn. I wonder if I can stay home sick...?
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 09:29 am (UTC)Can help with the Bob situation though - my father's sister's husband, my mother's biological brother, and my mother's adopted father's brother, are called Bob.
My standard response to "Bob's your uncle" is "Yes, three of them", which confuses people no end.