Plumbing - The Joys of Home Ownership

I hate messing with plumbing issues in my house. The only thing I hate worse than fixing plumbing issues is paying someone else $75 an hour to do it. (guess that makes me a tight wad)

In the past, among other things, I tried fixing a leaky bath tub faucet. Everything went ok at first. (I think I "worked” on this faucet 6 times in the 10 years we lived in that house) I took the faucet apart. Found the faulty seal. Put it back together.

Now it's unavoidable when I "fix" something that I have to get a new tool or another part. Never mind that I have a tool box in the garage that is about 6 feet tall and full of everything you can imagine… for some reason, I’m always missing something. (I think that fact is more frustrating for my wife than it is for me)

So, like I said, I finally put everything back together and tada. It worked. Almost. Kinda. It was ok when I checked it. But the next morning when my wife took a shower it was leaking worse than before (awe $h!t). So, I try again. Did I mention that this was a tiled bath/shower… so this time the tile starts coming off. A lot of it. It seems to all be loose. Every time I take one off the next one rattles and basically falls off too. By the time I’m done, I’ve removed 80% of the tile, removed the entire faucet assembly, cut the pipe that runs up the wall to the shower head, replaced two 4 foot sections of wall stud that had rotted from years of leakage AND cut a hole in the wall in the laundry room so I can get to the back of the whole mess. This only took about 2 weeks, at which time the whole family was restricted to baths only (yuck).

I tell you all of that to tell you this; my hot water heater started leaking last week. (great, now what else is going to fall apart when I touch the water heater). It looks rather straight forward (that’s the way all of my BIG projects start). The high pressure valve is leaking, it just screws into place. No big deal. But there is a pipe soldered to it that prevents it from unscrewing. Great, now what. Un solder the pipe, ok heat it up (which seems to take forever), it breaks loose. But not before two labels on the hot water heater melt and a rubber gasket melts and catches fire. (gawd I hope the smoke detectors don’t go off). The paint on the water heater is scorched brown now too. (it adds character…) It’s all back together and working (gas is back on, water is hot, nothing is leaking) except for the long pipe. I have to (you guessed it) go get another part… Tomorrow is Sunday, I hope the hardware stores are open.