Procrastinet

Eau, No!

filed under: Stuff you never, ever needed to know

When, I wonder, is unauthorized water going to stop invading our house?

Last week, I paid the price for my inexpert plumbing during the bedroom renovation. Faithful readers may remember that one final leaky joint in the baseboard heater, which I epoxied to within an inch of its life.

Thursday night, I was on Lisa's side of our bedroom, in my bare feet. And suddenly I'm thinking to myself "huh, that's funny, I don't remember this part of the hardwood floor being ridged with sharp edges..."

I checked under Max's bed, and sure enough the fugitive joint was leaking vigorously. Which had caused the floor boards to warp all the way through the closet and out into our room.

Our super, who's really just another owner who likes to tell people what to do with their apartments, was away. Since he's the only person with access to the baseboard heating system in the basement, I couldn't turn the water off. It was also after midnight in an absurdly busy week, and Max was asleep in the bed that bestrides the problem spot. So I did what any sensible homeowner would do: I stuffed a towel under the bed and went to sleep.

The next day I called in "flood" at work for the third time in six weeks and set about repairing the leaky joint. Which would be hard enough to do properly with the pipe drained and dry and re-solderable, let alone undrained and full of water. Let alone undrained and full of VERY HOT water that wants to get free of all this constricting pipework and explore our hardwood floors and Max's rug, and maybe see if it can burn my fingerprints off.

With the aid of a length of rubber tubing, a tube of caulk and several pipe clamps, I got the thing covered. And it held. All day Friday. Saturday morning. All dry. No problems.

Saturday afternoon it was leaking again. I removed the rubber tubing and caulk, and replaced it with bigger rubber tubing and wax. Which didn't even pretend to work, and began dripping immediately. So I removed that and replaced it with rubber tubing and string caulk weatherstrip, which just laughed at me. So I removed that and replaced it with rubber tubing and the original kind of caulk, which I let sit out for an hour to partially cure before putting it on.

And finally, finally, with six pipe clamps in place, the leak stopped.

If you've ever considered trying to screw a pipe clamp together over a length of black rubber tubing wedged between two hot heater pipes while scalding water and melted caulk spray all over you: don't. Give it a miss. You won't regret it.

[Note: as you can see, faced with the immasculating prospect of carping endlessly about minor suburban nuisances while also publishing letters from a correspondent in a politically volatile area who gets drunk with mercenaries and almost got blown up last week, I've decided what the heck. Soon I'll get around to posting the pictures of my kid's barf, and the dichotomy will be complete.]

Posted by rjt at November 15, 2005 12:56 PM