Amateur Megalomania

A Mote In My Eye

May 30th, 2006 | by Todd W |

This will be the last entry in the Sink Saga, provided something horrible doesn’t go wrong in the near future.

When we last left our intrepid amateur plumber, he was kneeling under the counter, scratching his head over a steady leak coming from somewhere in the dark recesses. Just when I thought I had things handled, it wasn’t quite right.

If you are keeping score, this is Wednesday. The sink replacement began on Sunday. Up until this point, I have made four trips to the hardware store associated with this project.

So, time to fix this leak. Getting back into my painful yoga position, I easily determined that one of the compression fittings wasn’t quite tight enough on the copper lead from the faucet. This has been a difficult thing to tighten anyway, so I’m not entirely surprised when I see the problem. I go back to my excruciating double wrench routine, operating by feel rather than sight.

A few cranks of the wrench seem to reduce the leak, until something pops and I get a face-full of hot water.

You’ve seen it on TV. The commercial advertising some plumbing gadget at two in the morning while you are zoning out with a bag of chips. Some schlub breaks something under the sink and gets comically sprayed with water, while the announcer voice offers a way for you to avoid this humiliation for the reasonable sum of $20 (per month, in three easy payments).

Well, that was me. I managed to get the water shut down and survey the damage. My upper wrench, the one tasked to hold the copper faucet lead in place while I torque the connector, slipped. As I was twisting the connector, the soft copper pipe was taking on the shape of a Twizzler, until it split open.

So where does one go to get emergency plumbing repairs at 10 PM on a weeknight? I took the faucet apart, dismounted it from the sink, and examined the problem. A few minutes on the internet suggested this could be solved, so I went to bed and tried not to think about the project.

Thursday after work, I make my fifth trip to the hardware store to see what options are available. I don’t have the requisite soldering equipment to cut the pipe and patch it. I start adding up the costs and discover a $10 bagged kit consisting of a fiberglass wrap. You soak it, wrap it, and let it dry for a half hour. It claims to offer a permanent seal on cracks like I am dealing with.

$10? Sure. I’m gullable.

I go home and wrap up the faucet. In thirty minutes I have what looks like a leg cast, hard as a rock on the copper pipe.

You know what comes next.

I inverted the faucet, filled the pipe with water, and then pressurized it by blowing into the pipe.

I’m guessing that leg casts aren’t effective moisture barriers. Maybe that’s why you can’t bathe with one.

So here are my remaining options.

1). Buy a new faucet.

Or…

2). Chisel off the cast, purchase soldering equipment, cut the pipe with a pipe cutter I don’t own, flare the pipe with a pipe flaring tool I don’t own, master a soldering skill I’ve never tried to replace pipe, then solder on the connecting fixture for the compression fitting.

After spending a second reviewing my experience in earning the sink installation merit badge, I give Diane the good news that she can get that faucet she really wanted.

So she makes the sixth trip to the store on Thursday evening. I’m thinking I’m going to do this one right. I’ll mount the compression fittings and hoses BEFORE putting the faucet on the sink. That way I’ll simply be able to drop it in place and connect things near the floor where I can reach without a problem. Yeah, I’ll get this one right.

Until she comes home with a faucet with a completely different mounting system. The now broken faucet had mounting pegs that served only as mounting pegs. The water hookups were different things entirely.

This new faucet actually mounted to the sink with threaded connectors that also served as water hookup points. This meant that the clamps that anchored the faucet HAD to go on first, screwed completely in place, and then you attached the hose to the same stem.

The yoga posture was completely unavoidable.

I couldn’t even apply the teflon tape before putting the faucet in place, which meant more one-handed application idiocy.

So, back to it. By now it is 11 PM on Thursday, and we have dishes stacking up like crazy. I push aside all physical discomfort like a Zen master, narrowing my world to nothing but wrenches, tape and hose. Time vanishes in a haze.

I attach the first line and turn on the water feed.

This time, the plastic flex holes splits in half and douses me with hot water. (Why does the hot water line always fail?!)

So it is midnight. I have no more hose, no more compression fittings, and no functioning sink.

I think my wife was considering divorce.

Midnight and I’m at Meijers, looking for anything that can carry water over a twenty inch span between two pipes. I mean, come on! I’m not trying to divert a river here.

Meijer doesn’t have what I need, but they do stock a flexible, metal jacketed hose with built in connectors for around $8 each. Who am I to dawdle over price at this point?

Nearing one in the morning, and I’m back under the sink with these new hoses. This time, I toss aside the stupid teflon tape and grab a big chunk of plumber’s putty. I’m smearing this stuff over the threads in great lumps, working it into every crevice I can feel. If this fails again, I’ll at least be able to say I tried everything.

That’s when a lump of putty landed squarely in my eye. The blink reflex then smeared it out over the eye and actually pushed a portion of it down under the lower eyelid. I can literally feel it floating around back there while the rest of it coats my contact lens.

Being a contact wearer, I’ve developed a tolerance to eyeball manipulation. With the wife’s help, we manage to fish the lump out of there and some eye flushing gets me back to being able to see what I’m doing (or not doing, to be precise).

Now if the sink would simply fall through the counter and crush my head, the comedy of errors would reach an appropriate conclusion.

Fortunately for me, the end wasn’t all that dramatic. I managed to tighten the hoses, dodge falling putty, and turn on the water supply at 1 AM on Thursday night.

As of this writing, Tuesday, the sink has not leaked a drop. I’m declaring victory. A Saddam-level victory in 1991.

The next major project? Pouring a 15×12 foot foundation for an outdoor shed.

How hard can it be?