Father’s Day, My Ass. Or, "Where's It Leaking This Time?"

On Saturday last weekend, I replaced the faucet on the kitchen sink. It’s a simple process - Step 1: remove old faucet... Yeah, right. I eventually used a ratchet handle as a hammer to pound the “finger-tight” plastic nuts loose, with insufficient clearance and no way to actually see what I was doing.

You see, Regina water has peculiar properties: the lime in it can cement the threads of nuts and bolts more securely than rust.

But I persevered, and managed to install the new faucet in half an hour. AFTER removing the old one. We tested the new faucet, and it worked wonderfully. Except there was a small leak in a horizontal section of the drainpipe. Ah, crap; the banging and smashing of finge - plastic things must have loosened a solder joint in the pipe. No problem, ‘cause I have a propane torch and I can figure out how to put more solder into the leaking joint. The Internet helped me there, and the next day, I began to get to work.

The propane torch didn’t work. I’m not able to see what’s wrong with it. It may just be dust in the burne unit, but I can’t see how to clean it. So I put a margarine container under the very small leak, and made plans to fix the drain this weekend. I started by buying a new propane torch yesterday. No problem.

I started to look at the pipes this afternoon. Sunday. Father’s Day afternoon.

I grabbed the pipe to wiggle it to see how loose the bad joint was, and my thumb went THROUGH the copper.

Remember the peculiar properties I mentioned of Regina’s municipal water supply? It corrodes copper pipes. It can take more than twenty years, but our drinking water will corrode copper pipes. And some of us drink the stuff.

So I called my father for moral support, and he came to watch and help as needed. Fortunately, the previous owner of the house left an eight foot long piece of pipe of just the right diameter in the basement rafters. Dad and I cut the pipe, cleaned it up, got the old, corroded piece out, and replaced it, with a false start here and there. It took about three hours, but we got it done.

We tested our work: it leaked from a different joint. I touched the vertical pipe next to that joint, and the copper collapsed. This time, the corroded pipe was the one attached to the sink drain. Ah, crap; we shoulda checked that, and we could've replaced both pieces at the same time. Oh well.

We heated and separated the bottom joint, took the remains outside, heated the top joint and got the corroded pipe off the flanged pipe from below the drain. We used our knowledge from the previous false starts and actually made good time in getting the old pieces of plumbing ready for the second new piece of copper pipe.

Did I mention that the eight-foot leftover pipe in the basement was a bit dirty? For lack of a wire brush, we used emery paper on the inside for over an hour to get it clean enough to solder into place. The sun had set by the time we had tested the fit, prepared the two new joints with flux, and heated the joints to solder them in place. Oh, and we remembered the plastic washer that goes between the plastic drain and the copper pipe.

We finished the second pipe relatively painlessly, and tested the new pipe again. And it leaked again. Crap. When I heated the joint, I accidentally melted the plastic parts above it. And those parts would be the bottom end of the drain.

By then it was 9:30 p.m. There are no hardware stores open. And I have to work in the morning.

My father has volunteered to pick up a new drain tomorrow from the nearest hardware store, and will help my Beloved (known for now as my first wife) install the new drain. Then she’ll be able to wash today’s dishes.

It’s now 11 p.m. and I haven’t yet gotten all the melted plastic off the top of the copper pipe. I also haven’t started the proofreading I volunteered to do for my dear friend who’s writing a newsletter for the Society for Creative Anachronism. She came to the house at 7:30 this evening to pick it up, and I have completely forgotten it.

I have drunk some Bailey’s Irish Cream and some tea. And I’m very frustrated with plumbing. I’m also rather sweaty now, so I’ll post this, have a couple of laps of the bath tub, and proofread what I can before I fall asleep exhausted.

And that was my Father’s Day.

I hate "holidays."