Geezer DIY Day
It's after 10 a.m. I haven't had any breakfast, only one cup of coffee, but I have accomplished a task I've been meaning to do for weeks ... well, months. The wash basin in my bathroom has been emptying at a snail's pace almost since I moved into the apartment about a year and a half ago. I know that had I put in a request for the maintenance guys to do something, one of them would show up with a plunger. (I love these guys, but if one wants something done right, ... well, you know the rest.) I have a plunger and have repeatedly tried to get the offending material to loosen up and go down the drain. That got me nowhere.
Yesterday, I finally made up my mind that I'd had enough and that this morning, before I had a chance to find an excuse not to do the job, I'd take the entire thing apart and find out what the problem was. After moving the storage cart out into the hall, I took one of those plastic milk crates for storage into the bathroom and put all the stuff in the cabinet below the basin into the crate. Then I squeezed a small plastic storage box (my bucket wouldn't fit) under the U-joint and attacked the two connectors at each end of the joint with the wrench (pliers actually). That was no problem. Then I probed a finger up into the vertical pipe that comes down from the drain in the basin. Yuccchh! I got a screwdriver and stuck that up into the pipe and wiggled it around. Turned on the water to flush whatever it was into the quasi-bucket. Puzzled at that point because the water was still coming out slowly from the basin. To get on to the end of this tale: I decided that I'd have to unhook the metal drain plug, which is quite a little operation itself. When I finally got that loose, I saw that it, not the U-joint was the problem. There was crud encrusted all around the three PVC vanes on the plug. I knew I had hit pay dirt (pun intended). Somehow, I got the entire assembly put back together, in spite of the uncomfortable position that I had had to be in for a half hour. Nevertheless, I still have the quasi-bucket under the U-joint in case I didn't get it screwed together quite tightly enough. I just didn't have the energy to spend any more time on it. Besides, I'm hungry.
Yesterday, I finally made up my mind that I'd had enough and that this morning, before I had a chance to find an excuse not to do the job, I'd take the entire thing apart and find out what the problem was. After moving the storage cart out into the hall, I took one of those plastic milk crates for storage into the bathroom and put all the stuff in the cabinet below the basin into the crate. Then I squeezed a small plastic storage box (my bucket wouldn't fit) under the U-joint and attacked the two connectors at each end of the joint with the wrench (pliers actually). That was no problem. Then I probed a finger up into the vertical pipe that comes down from the drain in the basin. Yuccchh! I got a screwdriver and stuck that up into the pipe and wiggled it around. Turned on the water to flush whatever it was into the quasi-bucket. Puzzled at that point because the water was still coming out slowly from the basin. To get on to the end of this tale: I decided that I'd have to unhook the metal drain plug, which is quite a little operation itself. When I finally got that loose, I saw that it, not the U-joint was the problem. There was crud encrusted all around the three PVC vanes on the plug. I knew I had hit pay dirt (pun intended). Somehow, I got the entire assembly put back together, in spite of the uncomfortable position that I had had to be in for a half hour. Nevertheless, I still have the quasi-bucket under the U-joint in case I didn't get it screwed together quite tightly enough. I just didn't have the energy to spend any more time on it. Besides, I'm hungry.