The pipes, the pipes are calling
Here is a story of a thing I messed up.
Our bathroom faucet started to leak months ago. For a while you could shut it down, or down to a tolerably small trickle, but it's been a while since that worked. Last year or so we asked a plumber to replace the faucet because of other issues and they were unwilling because the sink basin is cracked (old injury done to it) and they didn't want to risk exploding the sink by trying. And then bunny_hugger and I couldn't agree about replacing the sink because we want to do a much-needed refurbishing of the whole bathroom, which might need us to wait until we get the house's ageing plumbing replaced.
And yet the faucet was still dribbling.
I did some research about how hard it is to replace a faucet. Turns out, it's almost easier than not changing a faucet, just unhook the supply lines, undo the locking bolt underneath the fixture, and pull the old out and drop the new in. All the hose and pipe sizes have been standardized forever so you just have to know whether whether the hot and cold faucets are four or eight inches apart.
But I'd have to do it without bunny_hugger knowing because otherwise we'd quarrel about redoing the bathroom and redoing the plumbing and the faucet would still dribble.
She was out Thursday night and most of Friday, for a combination of work events and publicity and practice for the upcoming State Women's Pinball Championship, report to come next week. Plenty of time to get faucet, gear, take the old off, put the new on, and I could practically taste the moment of her coming out of the bathroom asking what was different there.
So the thing plumbing web sites don't adequately explain: everything about replacing a faucet is easy except getting the old faucet out. Because the decades of old dribbled water will make the metal parts rust into the sink's ceramic, and make the plastic nuts (if your sink is new enough to have plastic locking nuts) brittle. And everything will get stuck, of course. Even several rounds of WD-40 --- at the advice of my father, who has never been prouder of me than when I decided to do a minor plumbing repair --- didn't help because the locking nuts fractured, leaving behind mounds of alloyed plastic-rust crud. All while I looked at how dreadfully cracked the sink is; I don't know how much of a jolt it could take but I could imagine a swung wrench hitting just a little too hard and the sink exploding.
Online plumbing advice said that fused locking nuts like this could be cured by just cutting the stupid things off. We don't have a Sawzall or other tool that might do it. I might hammer and chisel the thing open if I weren't afraid of hitting the sink upside-down in a tight space. I thought briefly of whether I could just take the whole sink out and put it back without catastrophe.
I decide I could not do this without catastrophe.
I figure to cut my losses. I connect the new supply lines, replacing the copper that didn't deserve my harassment, and tighten both ends snug as I can by hand. And then, as the plumbing web sites suggest, took out the wrench to give a quarter-turn past what I can do by hand.
Here is the catastrophe: I tap the wrench against the hot water shutoff valve handle, and it pops off.
Here I admit defeat, calling the plumber and getting the sad news they can't come out until Monday afternoon. I am able to turn the cold water on, at least, without messing things up. I put an empty bucket under all this for a couple hours to see if it's leaking any. It seems all right enough, with the cold water working anyway. My father suggests using needle-nose pliers to turn the stem enough to restart the hot water. The stem is completely shorn. We have a half-working sink.
When bunny_hugger gets home, after she tells me about a very busy and exciting day-and-change away from home, I hit her with the news. She takes it with the sort of gentleness I'd probably show if she had broken the handle trying to fix the faucet on her own. In a full reversal of roles, she refuses to allow me to blame myself for breaking it, putting the blame on the age and wear on the valve.
Monday, we hope, the plumber will be out and be willing to change out the valve --- I plan to ask to change both valves, on the grounds the cold is probably in as bad a shape as hot --- even if they don't like the sink. This is supposing that the house's shutoff valve is good enough they'll risk using it. If it's not, then I really broke the house. I figure also to ask if they'll take the old faucet out too, since the most they can do is laugh in my face, and I can deal with that. We've also resolved that we are just going to get a sink to replace this one, without letting the fact we have a new sink delay our other repairs. We're hoping that come Monday evening the bathroom will be no worse off than it was before I screwed it up.
The faucet dribbles.
Now to pictures of a thing I did not mess up: our trip to Camden Park back in June. Enjoy some more views of it.
Again at the far end of the Big Dipper. From here you can see the turnaround, the tunnel, and one of the bigger drops.
Here's the northern side of Big Dipper, and one of the bigger drops.
Here's that same view, but I have both a roller coaster train on the secondary hill and the Disc'o ride at near its full height.
A pile of new-looking lumber that was sitting across from the Big Dipper. Its purpose, a mystery. You know we don't expect to get back to a park soon when we're taking pictures of random piles of construction supplies.
You can get shockingly close to the roller coaster! (I could poke my camera through gaps in the fence and again I remind you, 21x optical zoom. The train was in the station or I wouldn't have had the nerve to try this.) Also from here you can see how many pieces of wood go into the base of a wood coaster.
Here's a look across the track so you can see the tunnel that's a fun later part of the ride.
Trivia: William Rufus King, vice-president for Franklin Pierce, was sworn into office on the 24th of March, 1853 (twenty days after the start of his term), on the Ariadne sugar plantation in Matanzas, Cuba. He had requested Congress authorize his swearing-in on foreign soil, as his health was too bad to let him travel to the United States. (He died the 17th of April, returning to his plantation and five hundred enslaved persons, but never reaching Washington, D.C.) Source: Cuba: An American History, Ada Ferrer. There were twelve witnesses, including two United States consuls. King was too weak to stand without the help of two persons, and immediately after the swearing-in returned to bedrest.
Currently Reading: Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum, Leonard Susskind, Art Friedman.