Mr. Murphy, I hate you!

Sunday, October 21. 2007

Mr. Murphy, I hate you!

I expected my Saturday to be a rather relaxing day, where I would mow the lawn, and install the new water heater I bought. I don't usually post random personal things to my blog, but I just need to complain about this one in public where it can make me feel better

I never got around to mowing, and installing the water heater went something like this:

1. Go to hardware store, buy what I think I need
2. drain old water heater
3. remove old water heater
3. Find out parts bought in step 1 don't fit in my basement, back to the hardware store
4. Start building the connectors to go from the pipe to the heater, notice one of the fitting bought in step 3 was wrong
5. Go back to the hardware store to buy proper fitting
6. Finally get the water heater hooked up, start filling it with water.
7. notice the primary water shutoff valve is leaking, badly (it was 30 years old)
8. Go to hardware store, buy new shutoff valve
9. drain and move new water heater
10. Cut pipes to remove shutoff valve
11. notice I cut one of the wrong pipes
12. Go back to hardware store to get what I need to fix the wrong pipe I cut (at this point, I bought lots of extra things "just in case")
13. install new shutoff valve
14. Put new water heater back in place, fill it up
15. rejoice as nothing leaks and the house has water again (at this point, it is 11:30pm, I started this project at about noon)

At this point I'm claiming that the reason I didn't hire someone to do this, is that when the primary shutoff valve broke, it would have likely ended up costing me a fortune in plumbing fees.

Posted by Josh Bressers in Random at 09:04 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

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I hear ya. I had a 16.5-ish foot run of railing along the deck I'm finishing up. I wanted to put a (2x4) cap rail on top of it. No problems; I run to Menards (the only place in town with a 18' 2x4). So I drive between towns with an 18' 2x4 crammed into my sedan-style car, leaving 8' of wood sticking out the back. I get it laid out, marked up, and cut the 45-degree angle to join with the next segment of rail. And then I realize that the cut went the wrong way and my specially-selected 18' 2x4 I spent so much effort to get is now too short or facing the wrong way..... Time to head back to the store.

[Now that it's done, it's totally worth it, though]

Also, plumbing is generally a scam. Good move to do it yourself.

Did you have to sweat copper for your project? (I'm guessing yes, from the looks of things.) I've not done it myself yet; is it pretty straightforward?

#1 Joseph on 2007-10-22 08:51 (Reply)

Yes, I've done quite a bit of copper work. It's not hard to do honestly, but it can be a bit tricky. The most important thing to keep in mind is all the water has to be out of the pipes. Any water (which will become steam) in the pipe will divert the heat from your joint, preventing the solder from properly taking hold.

I never really understood the incredible amount of heat water can transfer until I started working with copper pipe.

#1.1 Josh Bressers (Homepage) on 2007-10-22 09:47 (Reply)

you know the old adage measure twice cut once I guess you forgot that one as many of us have over the years LOL

#2 pakman on 2010-02-25 01:50 (Reply)

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