Not A Plumber

Yesterday, I decided to check off one of the items on my to do list, one that I thought would be a quick fix... Fix the faucet on the back of the house. It had been dripping for some time and I had taken to turning the water off to keep it from dripping. I figured I could just turn off the water, unscrew the spigot and screw a new one on. Maybe a ten minute fix.

I always underestimate what could happen. I started turning the spigot, got it around a couple of turns, but it didn't seem to be coming off the end of the pipe. I stopped for a minute and that is when I heard a sort of a hissing sound. It took me about 30 seconds to realize it was water. The spigot was so tight on the pipe that when I was turning it, what I was in fact turning was the pipe out of the fitting off of the main line in the basement.

I ran into the house and as I pivoted to run down the basement steps, the bottoms of my shoes were wet from the hose dripping outside, so I slid across the floor and fell backward on my butt, That wouldn't have been so bad but I twisted both my knee and my ankle. OW! I let out a couple of choice explatives, unfortunately Ali had a friend over. It was sort of embarrassing and actually the fall gave Ali and her friend a bit of a scare.

I got back up and limped downstairs to see water spraying out all over like a fountain. I ended up having to turn off the water at the main shut off. Then it was time to clean up. I found out that the threads on the end of the pipe were so old and corroded that they broke so that I couldn't just screw it back in. This resulted in a trip to home depot to get some spare parts.

Well the problem is that after looking at things, the pipes won't line up. The people who lived in the house before us (or someone who was here before us) put a couple of 45° elbows in the line. So now when I was turning the pipe, it was off center. This meant getting a whole new pipe, but since I had the water off and the valve for outside was past the "T" joint I had to get the pipe in place fast since all the water in the house was now turned off. I bought a small section of pipe and a new shutoff valve so I could turn the water back on and work on the pipe.

That was easy enough. The hard part was working on the broken pipe now. All my pipes are the old, galvanized style, and I couldn't get the broken section out. It took me about 30 minutes to get it apart, but now I didn't have a section to replace it because of the elbows. The elbows made it so that the pipe would not line up with the new valve/original joint. After three or four more trips to Home Depot looking for a solution, I managed to find a 6" flexible line that fit on the ends so that I could at least turn the water back on. I am definitely not a plumber. So for now I at least have no leaks and can use the hose outside, but it is going to need to have a permanent fix soon.