While checking my e-mail I was ‘instant messaged’ by Glenn, a friend of my Dad's. It developed that amongst other things, dad's kitchen sink had a leak somewhere underneath. You know, one opens the cupboard to toss something in the trash and notices a puddle where normally things are expected to be bone dry. One hates this.
Glenn said he had traced the problem to the cold water shut-off valve. I know this valve. It is relatively new, as plumbing stuff goes. It was installed about 15 years ago when their kitchen was remodeled, and I had perused it not two years ago when contemplating how difficult it might be to replace dad’s sometime leaking kitchen faucet. A lot of homes still don’t even HAVE individual shut-off valves under the sink. Dad's kitchen faucet still leaks if not shut off just so, relatively-new-shut-off-valve-under-the-sink notwithstanding. His house always has bigger leaks to fry, so to speak. Don't worry, I'll get around to it one day.
Glenn reported that dad had a bucket under the under-sink-leak.
Well. Dad hadn’t called about this leak (nor would he ever) it just isn't his style. And nor had Frances, my stepmom. (And they didn’t set Glenn up to it.) It wasn’t a big problem (yet), it had a bucket.
These things bug me.
I know what a plumber would charge to come out, survey the situation, and replace the valve. I used to do it. He’d get there at 10 in the morning, and by noon have deduced the valve was leaking. So the morning is shot. He’d change it after lunch and therefore have to charge for a whole day at plumbers rates. A REALLY good guy would get there early, fix it right away, and only charge for a half day. And then run to the next job and hope to be able to get that done in a couple hours to get a whole days pay. Why bother, right? Just soak these guys for a whole day and get a couple beers on the way home. No problem. It’s actually worse than that, in truth. The plan would be: charge enough for the half day to cover the rest of the day, and spend the rest of the day in the bar. Oh, those rascally plumbers!
Glenn was game to try the repair himself, but he’d never soldered copper pipes. Best to learn on ones own pipes, I always say. And I still owe Dad and Fran big time for their unflagging generosity and patience when I had moved back to Michigan, and stayed with them briefly. As in, nearly a year.
So I showed up at dad's sometime after noon the next day, tools in hand. Dad and Frances were already occupied since I hadn’t announced my plans. This is what I wanted - just fix the leak. I was hoping to keep it brief. Well aware, of course, that what usually happens at such times is that everything goes to hell in the proverbial handbasket and one is there all day and half the night trying to get things right.
I was immediately reminded why it is best to let folks know you are on the way. THEY empty the cupboard. Oh well.
I went after the leak like a hound after the fox, digging with both paws. And there it was! Just as Glenn had surmised, the cold water shut off was a drip-dripping. Several things came to mind. I couldn’t see in there. Went for a light. Then a bigger light. OK, now I can see the leak, if I have my glasses on. Yep, leaking. By really paying close attention, wiping and drying and feeling and looking close, it can be deduced that the leak is not coming from anyplace visible from the front. It is at this point I begin to see the wisdom of the ‘module concept’. On your TV or an F40 locomotive, everything is modules. They don’t try to decide which transistor is bad, they replace the module. The leaking faucet was rapidly beginning to look to me like a module. A faucet module, if you will. I would simply replace the whole durn thing. Ok fine.
Soldering copper pipe is really pretty simple. The propane torch heats the copper, the solder melts, viola!
Of course, there can’t be any water in the pipe one is trying to solder/unsolder. So, water to the house must be shut off, and the pipes drained. Past experience led me to the main water shut off in a dusty corner of a seldom used part of the basement. Opening all the faucets in the house allows the water to find its own level, and vacate the above ground pipes. This left only the pipe that I was actually working on that absolutely must be empty of water. To facilitate matters I dis-assembled the valve itself before applying the propane torch. It was at that point that I noticed several parts of said valve were burnt, leading me to surmise that the previous plumber/handyman had soldered the thing into the system with OUT taking it apart. Thus burning the fiber washer separating the upper and lower segments of the valve, and thus causing a premature leak 15 years later. Ok fine.
There is another challenge to be met before applying heat under the sink. The torch produces beaucoup BTU’s. We want most of them to go directly into the copper pipe and related appendages. Some will inevitably go elsewhere. It is the elsewhere that matters. If the elsewhere is wood, as in ‘kitchen cupboard’ then fire is the logical result. One hates that.
So. Dad had lots of old license plates in the garage, and they made excellent heat shields (reflectors, or heat sinks, if one prefers) behind and under the ‘work area’.
During the ‘take apart the old valve’ segment of this operation I had noticed something else: the valve was hard to reach.
It was at the very back of the undersink area, and at the very bottom. So as I faced into the cupboard on my knees and peered back in there, it was very far away. If I hunched closer my knees hit the edge of the cabinet, and I still couldn’t reach the ‘work area’. So I had to LEAN INTO the undersink area with my upper body, and reach out with my arms to apply the necessary forces (leverage, heat, whatever) to get anything accomplished. This is all well and good. Except I never remembered my body objecting quite so much to being bent into this "S" position. I would somehow automatically rock forward on my knees and have to catch myself on my elbows. This would cause my hands to raise to about the level of my chin, and render any lower back of sink area work impossible. As I sat back to catch my breath and think this over, I realized that the last time I attempted this sort of thing I didn’t have 25 extra pounds of belly to try and hold off the ground. Ok fine.
Yes, deal with it, I thought to myself. I flopped onto my side, and wiggled underneath that way. At the arrival of my upper body to the work area I twisted head and shoulders to where I could prop myself on one elbow and have both hands near where they might be of some use. My glasses fell off. The light moved. Deal with it. Ok fine.
Back out. Start again. No problem. This time I even remembered to light the propane torch BEFORE I got in there. Applied heat to the pipes. Applied heat to the general undersink area, as it were. From past experience I knew that after an appropriate amount of time, not only was I suffocating, but that the necessary amount of heat was not going into the ‘work area’. Back myself out of that now hellish compartment. Only one thing will stop a copper pipe from unsoldering. Standing water in the pipe itself. It dissipates the heat and the pipe doesn’t get hot enough to melt the solder. This had to be the case. To make sure, I wiggled back in there and stuck my finger into the bottom of the old valve. Sure enough, it was full of water. Water heated to well past boiling, as it were. I found myself with my finger in my mouth, standing upright with a bump on my head, and no recollection of how I got there. Ok fine.
No sense hurrying and making mistakes, I reminded myself, somewhat belatedly, while applying the ice.
Paper toweling repeatedly inserted into the valve bottom gradually soaked up the standing water, causing little or no pain. Applied heat separated the old valve from the pipes, just as it should. The new valve went right in. Ok fine!
And in fact, the whole operation only took an hour or so, including a trip to the hardware for the new valve. The blister lasted three days.
As usual, most of these stories have a moral. The moral of this one is: never stick your head in an alligators mouth.
Ok. I stole that moral from Jim Vettraino. I couldn’t think of anything wiser.
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