...more recent posts
more fun with plumbing. i wont complain about how long it took the plumber to engage with the project because he is here now or he was a minute ago. now he is out solving a problem i created for him although admittedly i thought it was the easiest solution and therefore cheapest solution which is turning out probably not to be the case.
all the pipes for my shower are outside the wall and probably pretty ancient. though who knows, maybe they were replaced 30 years ago. im told they are brass painted over with a matte silver finish though the finish has been unfinished for as long as ive been here and undoubtedly much longer.
the final 3 foot pipe leading up to the shower arm (a term i just learned) and ultimatley the shower head had eroded at the juncture just above the hot and cold knobs. so it wasnt a plumbing emergency since there was no leakage, i just couldnt take a shower or at least not one very well as i found out this morning as i held the broken pipe in place as i attempted a quick rinse cycle. but as far as i could tell the threading on the female coupling was intact and only that the one stretch of piping needed to be replaced. the plumber in his hasty appraisal had just decided it was easier to replace the entire run of pipes including the faucets and the shower head, et al. should i have cared? probably not. was it likely something marginally less asthetically pleasing? i couldnt even say because he never brought it over for me to see, although he complained that he couldnt return it which seems unlikely as it was purchased today and is unopened.
i never actually complained that he was replacing "an antique" for something lesser, but that is what he decided was my concern. i really was thinking of it as the simplest fix, as i said, and the cheapest. i left him alone to do what he would after he snapped at me for acting like his wife which he doesnt have. but in the time he was disassembling the shower arm from the wall he decided he would give it a go... without any real prompting. so he left and came back with the same poorly painted brass pipe with some fresh new threading on one end. i didnt even know that was a thing. unfortunately, the threading didnt match. he said something about it being female to female. i gave him a 'whaddya gonna do' look, and the answer was look for a connecting piece to join the two. is that a fitting? maybe?
so the buzzer just knocked me out of my stupor. next stage is upon us. im not gonna even bother to look in until he yelps in frustration or triumph.