CoffeeBear.net

Plumb Fun

Posted by Mark | Filed under Life

Thanks to the loverly weather we’ve been hav­ing in Iowa, our house is hav­ing some plumb­ing issues. The sub­zero tem­per­a­tures caused the sup­ply line pipes to our down­stairs tub to freeze, but for­tu­nately not burst. Unfor­tu­nately, when they thawed a bit it freed up some of the years of lime/calcium/crud in the pipes. The build-up then broke a thinga­madoo­dle inside the faucet caus­ing the water to run with­out stop­ping.  Nat­u­rally this is in the tub which didn’t like to drain.

My wife found this out when she got home and started call­ing var­i­ous plumbers. But none of them could get to the house right away and the tub was in dan­ger of over­flow­ing. Luck­ily one of the plumbers she talked to rec­om­mended a drain clean­ing ser­vice which was able to get out to the house and within an hour got the tub drain­ing bet­ter than I’ve ever seen it drain.  So one poten­tial prob­lem was solved but the run­ning water was still going. For extra fun the drain guys con­vinced my wife that we had a busted pipe in the wall.

After they left, she was even­tu­ally able to get in touch with a plumber who could come out. But we had to agree to pay an after-hours fee of$175 to get him there and since we were con­cerned about the pipes, we agreed. When the plumber even­tu­ally got to the house, he con­firmed what I thought when I got home (no busted pipes). He had to kill the water to the entire house to shut­down the water to the tub and then got to work.  He found the bro­ken thinga­madoo­dle, but didn’t have a replace­ment in his truck. He left to try get­ting one from a hard­ware store but that store did not have the part either.

He said the com­pany he works for required him to charge us the $175 for com­ing out plus $119 for the work he already did plus $2.69 for an “envi­ron­men­tal fee”. He then told us he would try track­ing down the part and com­ing back the next day, on his own time so he wouldn’t have to charge us another $119 to com­plete the work.  Unfor­tu­nately he called us the next day to say nobody appears to have the part and we have to spe­cial order it.

*sigh* Ain’t home-ownership grand?

Similar Posts

• I Hate Plumbing
  With apologies to Cole Porter... I hate plumbing in the spring time, I hate plumbing in the fall, I ...
• The Plumbing Nightmare Continues
  Finally heard back from the plumber's part guy. They have to order direct from the manufacturer as n ...
• Minor Home Remodel
  We recently noticed that the sink in our master bathroom was leaking. I traced the link to a crack ...
• 3761 ways to go Bonkers
  Have the dentist tell you they want to do about $2000 worth of work inside your mouth, after they'v ...
• Hot Time on the Town
  While I do love the views and general atmosphere of the office we moved into, the room gets really b ...