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Last spring, I heard a noise in my house, on all floors, that sounded a little like water running. A check of the indoor plumbing showed all faucets were operating well, no leaks. Checked the outside faucet, near the front of the house, with the same result - no drip, no running leak. Satisfied everything was okay, I let the noise slip my mind. Other matters moved to the front of my attention, and I didn't think anymore about the noise until I went to the basement a couple of days later to do a load of laundry. I noticed water on the floor. A lot of water. Then I noticed a hissing sound, much like a gas pipe leak, only I don't have gas lines in my house.
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I followed the trail of water across the room to near the furnace/boiler. Water was dripping heavily from one of the horizontal copper pipes leading to the boiler, or so I thought. I was working in the dark on that side of the house, so I backtracked to my downstairs tool box, fumbled around for the flashlight and retraced my steps back to the furnace/boiler. That's when I discovered there was a huge crack in the flow regulator (first picture) on one of the pipes leading into/out of the boiler, from which water was spraying all over everything in that corner.
Okay...so this repair was going to involve replacing the flow regulator, which meant shutting off the main from the street, opening a faucet on each floor to drain out the water already in the pipes; then gathering my various wrenches and pliers, some gloves, nylon pipe tape and that stuff you wrap around the threads inside a valve stem; gloves, the flashlight affectionately called Skull-crusher, maybe some solder and a propane torch, my reading glasses and a 10-gallon bucket on which to set my tools (and my butt when I got tired).
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The ex-Beloved had always handled the plumbing and electrical repairs in the house, but he had moved out a couple of months before the fountain in the basement, so I was on my own.
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Suddenly, I heard Mary Martin and Ethel Merman in my head, singing “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” (from Annie Get Your Gun). I hiked up my imaginary tool-belt, cocked my imaginary cowboy hat at the same angle John Wayne used to do his in all those Western movies, and told my imaginary Number One to “Make it so!” (We all have our little gimmicks to get ourselves psyched-up for those DIY jobs that intimidate us; this is mine, okay?)
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I needed to remove the cracked regulator so I could take it to the big-box hardware store to show the plumbing expert (HA!) there exactly what I wanted. (Learned to do that during a previous plumbing repair experience. Don’t ask.)
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I thought I was making remarkable progress loosening that coupler and was congratulating myself, with Mary and Ethel providing musical encouragement on the sidelines.
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That’s when things started going downhill.
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I noticed that the coupler wasn’t coming loose, just turning, and that the top part of it was bending. Surely, that wasn’t right. Mary and Ethel stopped singing. (See the second picture.)
Did you know copper pipe would twist like that in the jaws of a monkey-wrench? Yeah, well I didn’t, see? I also forgot to use two wrenches, turning in opposite directions, so I wouldn’t create additional problems. ..
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Five trips back to the big-box hardware, three different lengths of copper pipes, more brass fittings than I’ll ever need in my remaining lifetime, a small hand-held propane torch, nine hours and seven scraped knuckles later, I finished repairing the pipe (last picture).
Only one problem: I used galvanized iron pipes attached to copper, which I read somewhere is a no-no. But the plumbing expert (ha!) at the big-box hardware assured me the pipes won’t corrode for years to come, and I’ll “probably be worm-food long before it happens.” His words. Lovely man.
(c) 2009 Martha McLemore
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