Rant about life!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Fred Voorhees]

Well, you may all recall the post I put up Sunday about my wife winning a nice 20" flat screen television/dvd player Saturday night at our local stock car racing track. Well, I should have known that life would balance the scales somehow.:mad:

I came home from work yesterday (Mon) to find that our phones in the house had no dial tone. At first, I thought, ok, the area has the phones down. But then I decided to check at the neighbors and, yup, they had service. The problem was with out lines/home. Ok, I call for a service call, which thankfully, is covered on our phone plan. No problem there. They tell me between 3:15 and 5 PM today (Tues). No problem again, as I have had a similar problem in the past and I think I knew exactly where the problem was. I could easily point it out to the repairman.

Well, I come home today from work and I notice that the phone answering machine is registering 3 incoming calls. I pick up the phone and there is a dial tone. The three calls consisted of one from the repairman telling me my phone lines were fixed and the other two were automated from the phone company telling me the same thing. Ok, so all is right with the world right? Wrong:eek: !!!

While straightening up from what was to be the phone technician visit, I hear a sound coming from inside the wall back in the washing machine and dryer room, you know, the room that I completely renovated just last year. I put my ear up to the wall and it sure does sound like water gushing. I check a meter I have in the closet where my water equipment is and there is no movement in the flow dials. I say, hum, that must mean that there is no leak. But, drat, all there is in that wall is plumbing piping. It HAS to be a leak. I am in a quandry wanting to believe its not a leek but it is killing me not knowing what it is. I finally take apart a knock down cabinet that surrounds my water heater, and sure enough, just inside the wall, right in plain sight it a pinhole leak. Fortunately, easily accessible. Not so fortunately, I do not do any plumbing besides the absolutel basic stuff and I try to call a buddy who is a plumber. Only get his answering machine. Can't wait to hear from him so I call an emergency plumbing deal and, you guessed it -------KACHING! If I had paid by credit card, it would have been well over $300 for a few inches of copper piping and a coupling. He let me pay cash and it dropped it down to $225.

Isn't life grand????

[John Kain]

Well, you may all recall the post I put up Sunday about my wife winning a nice 20" flat screen television/dvd player Saturday night at our local stock car racing track. Well, I should have known that life would balance the scales somehow.:mad:

I came home from work yesterday (Mon) to find that our phones in the house had no dial tone. At first, I thought, ok, the area has the phones down. But then I decided to check at the neighbors and, yup, they had service. The problem was with out lines/home. Ok, I call for a service call, which thankfully, is covered on our phone plan. No problem there. They tell me between 3:15 and 5 PM today (Tues). No problem again, as I have had a similar problem in the past and I think I knew exactly where the problem was. I could easily point it out to the repairman.

Well, I come home today from work and I notice that the phone answering machine is registering 3 incoming calls. I pick up the phone and there is a dial tone. The three calls consisted of one from the repairman telling me my phone lines were fixed and the other two were automated from the phone company telling me the same thing. Ok, so all is right with the world right? Wrong:eek: !!!

While straightening up from what was to be the phone technician visit, I hear a sound coming from inside the wall back in the washing machine and dryer room, you know, the room that I completely renovated just last year. I put my ear up to the wall and it sure does sound like water gushing. I check a meter I have in the closet where my water equipment is and there is no movement in the flow dials. I say, hum, that must mean that there is no leak. But, drat, all there is in that wall is plumbing piping. It HAS to be a leak. I am in a quandry wanting to believe its not a leek but it is killing me not knowing what it is. I finally take apart a knock down cabinet that surrounds my water heater, and sure enough, just inside the wall, right in plain sight it a pinhole leak. Fortunately, easily accessible. Not so fortunately, I do not do any plumbing besides the absolutel basic stuff and I try to call a buddy who is a plumber. Only get his answering machine. Can't wait to hear from him so I call an emergency plumbing deal and, you guessed it -------KACHING! If I had paid by credit card, it would have been well over $300 for a few inches of copper piping and a coupling. He let me pay cash and it dropped it down to $225.

Isn't life grand????

You're lucky you caught it early and it was "cheap" to fix.

See, there's always a bright side!

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Life's like that sometimes! Sorry to hear about your water leak!

[Jim Becker]

'Last time I heard that "whooshing" in the wall...I ended up with a not-so-free bonus powder room remodel... ;)

Acid water does that to copper, Fred. And in this area, there is a lot of acid water!

[Bruce Page]

Fred, that’s peanuts. Several years ago, on a New Years Day to be exact, I had a hot water pipe let go under the concrete slab. Several hours later, one of my bedrooms had a 4’ hole jack-hammered into the floor. I learned that day that the soil in my part of town is very acidic.:( It cost me $3000 to replace a 3’ section of copper pipe. Seven months later, we had another leak in a different part of the house. $1200 and two days without any water, I had new pipes in the attic. The plumber had to rip out a piece of sheetrock in the bathroom to access the main plumbing manifold (which I still haven't re-textured) . We still have one run of copper pipes going to the kitchen that could spring a leak at any time....I love plumbing.

I still have that $3000, 3ft piece of copper pipe.:mad:

[Paul Prescott]

Sorry for your leak. Try living in central Texas where a lot is built on caliche soil (calcium carbonate that "cements" together other materials like sand, gravel, clay, silt). Ruptures pipes anywhere from the street to the house and sometimes beyond. Plumbers thrive in this area!

[Don Baer]

When I was young and foolish I was stationed in Idaho falls for Nuke power training. I was out shooting in the lava beds driving my Chevy across the lava beds in Idaho. I ran over a piece of lava (go figure) and put a pins hole leak in my tranmission pan. The pan was aluminum. Being out in the sticks. I looked in my trunk and found a sheet metal screw, a ball pin hammer and a screw driver. I hammerer the pan back together. I then screwed the screw into the remaining small hole hole and the leak stopped. I drove it to my apartment. Being young and foolish and not seeing any sign of gross leakage I left it alone since I was being transfered to my next duty station in a few weeks and had 2 weeks leave coming to me. I just left it alone. When I finished my assignment I took off for home on leave and drove 13 hours to my folks house in southern California. After spending a few days at home I mentioned to my dad that I had a sheet metal screw plugging a leak in my transmission pan. He had me drain the trany and pull the pan. He brased the Aluminum pan for me. I re-installed it and and drove the car to Connecticut. If I had a problem similar to your I would have attempted a similar temp repair until I could get ahold of the plumber of my choice.

[Peter Stahl]

Fred,

Do like Don Baer said or get some compression fittings. Compression fittings are really easy to install. Also sweating copper tubing is much easier than it looks. Another trick to sealing a pinhole leak is a piece of rubber and a hose clamp. I too hate putting out money for stuff like that especially when you have a friend that will do it for free.

[Joe Pelonio]

Fred,

Do like Don Baer said or get some compression fittings. Compression fittings are really easy to install. Also sweating copper tubing is much easier than it looks. Another trick to sealing a pinhole leak is a piece of rubber and a hose clamp. I too hate putting out money for stuff like that especially when you have a friend that will do it for free.

Your situation is part of Murphy's law, the part about good things being balanced out by bad. Hopefully the value of your prizes still exceeds the cost for the plumber.

I wonder what caused the hole. I got a call from my Mom years ago, she was sheetrocking her garage and water was running out all over. She turned off the house valve until I arrived, and she had missed the stud and put a nail into the copper pipe. I used Peter's method, rubber and a
hose clamp, and it never leaked in the 12 years she lived there. Actually it's no different than the valve kits they sell for installing a dishwasher or icemaker, where it punctures the copper and seals with rubber and clamp.

[Fred Voorhees]

Well, what the plumber actually did was to simply cut the pipe pretty much right where the pinhole leak was and slid a coupling over each side and sweat it into place. Problem solved. I could have done that, but I tend to be weary of problems mid-stream that I might not be able to so simply resolved. Plumbing and me have a rather checkered past.:o

[Ernie Nyvall]

So when all is said and done you got a flat screen for $225... still not a bad deal.:D And you got a free phone service call.:cool:

Ernie