Sunday, May 18, 2008

Who Likes Plumbing?

I don't like plumbing repairs, even if they're just under the sink and it's all PVC. When I removed the clogged up nonfunctioning garbage disposal a few months ago, I replaced the sink drain. The sink, afterwards, leaked slightly, underneath, at junction of the lip of the new drain and the sink. It was just a teensy leak, nothing major. I never got around to fixing it.

When my brothers' guys came up shortly thereafter, to do some repairs, the sink was one of the repairs they tackled. Unfortunately, they only made matters much worse.

The PVC pipe just below the drain extension has leaked like a sieve ever since. But that is not the only place the leaks began. There was a leak also at the junction of the pipe Post-trap and the pipe it joined with, at the back of the cabinet wall. Ugh!

Sure, it's been disgusting. I did take a look at the one pipe that joins with the sink drain, to see why it was leaking. It was a straight piece of PVC with a plastic screw joiner and washer, but the piece was so short (extended only a fraction of an inch into the pipe it met), and the plastic washer too stretched, so when the joiner was tightened, the plastic washer was just pushed off that end and was useless. So the pipe was just barely nesting into the sink drain piece that sicks down through the sink, with space all around it to leak when I ran water.

I sat a bucket under it all and put off repair.

But I'd have to empty the bucket daily and sometimes twice daily and if I forgot, yukko! I forgot lots.

So I got the proper piece of PVC at Home Depot. I cut it to fit today with a handsaw. I fixed the other piece also, that was not attaching properly because an old distorted screw joiner (I have no knowledge of correct plumbing part terminology, so I make up names for parts) whose distorted diameter disallowed the plastic washer to seat properly, so it would then not screw onto the adjoining pipe.

So far, no more leaks. I've got the cabinet doors wide open under the sink and plan to leave them that way for a few days to thoroughly dry. It is seriously soggy under there and has been for awhile.

I hate trying to fix plumbing. I ain't no good at it and have no clue what I'm doing. But...who's going to fix that leaking sink if I don't?

Nobody, that's who.

Soggy wet underneath sink.
The bucket I'd have to constantly empty from the leaking pipes.
The old piece of PVC, without a lip, that extended up (barely) into the pipe protruding down through the sink from the drain.
The new piece, with lip, and cut to fit.
Jigsaw puzzle of PVC pieces beneath the sink to drain both sides of sink and end up together, as one, to take that journey on, to the stormwater system, into the river, down to the ocean, evaporated into the atmosphere, returned as rain, into a reservoir or canal, if not intercepted by some other city for its own water, and maybe one day back out my own kitchen faucet again! The melodrama and secrets of water life. I'd like to be a fly on the wall, hahahaha, to find out what water really does and where it goes when I'm not watching it! Hohohohoho.
Distorted old "screwer" without proper inner diameter to accomodate a washer AND the diameter of the mating threaded pipe. Hence the leak there.
Done. No more leaks. At least, not yet.......

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