Saturday, January 31, 2009

Reid's Plumbing Skills: Fail

Today's project was to fix the drippy faucet in the tub.

Here's the open access hatch in the hall closet. Notice anything missing?

Yes, there's no shutoff valves! So I have to shut off the water to the whole house in order to do anything.

Step 1 is to disassemble the faucet and stretch out the springs a little, reasoning that they're a bit worn out (when I did the bathroom sink, the hardware dudes told me that it's often the springs that wear out, not the rubber gaskets). I had put everything back together again before I remembered that I wanted to take a picture. Doh!

However, it leaked way worse than before, so that problem was out of the way. Here's the disassembled faucet with the old gaskets and springs:

Trip #1 to the hardware store yielded new gaskets and springs. These installed easily and now the faucet didn't drip any more. Yay!

However, now the faucet itself leaked when the water was on (I'm not sure if it did this before). So, trip #2 to the hardware store yielded another, different new washer (no photo, sorry). However, this fit rather tightly, and maybe I overtightened it, but the faucet action was now extremely tight, and in messing with it, I destroyed the new gaskets. Sigh.

I didn't have the heart to go back to the hardware store AGAIN. Maybe on Monday.

Long story short, after a lot more futzing, the faucet was put back together with all old parts except the springs, and it's more or less the way it was before I started (unless the leaking while turned on was new, in which case it's worse), though the dripping does seems to be a lot less (just not eliminated).

Project 100, #18, #19.



Oh, program note: I'm going to stop tagging the Project 100 posts "project100" and "photography", since that's pretty much all I post lately and those tags don't add much value.

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