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A Plumbing Story by George Reis About a month ago I reached under the kitchen sink and discovered that one of the drain pipes was very corroded and beginning to leak. Although I don't consider myself to be Mr. Fix-It, I decided to do the repair myself - after all, how hard could it be to replace a little pipe? I was certain that it would be a 30 minute repair and a five dollar part. So, I made a trip to Home Depot. At Home Depot, I found that the drain pipes came in fixed lengths that needed to be cut to fit. So, after returning home, I got out my 20 year old hacksaw and expended too much effort making a very crooked cut. Then I took out the old drain pipe, and found that the sink drain basket also needed to be replaced. So, back to Home Depot I went to get a new basket. Deciding that I should go ahead and replace the drain on the other side of the sink while I was at it, I bought a second drain pipe and two drain baskets and a basked nut wrench. It seems like every home project need at least one new tool! The five dollar, 30 minute repair was now up to $30, two trips to Home Depot of about 45 minutes each, and over an hour of frustration attempting to actually fix the drain... I cut the second drain pipe, then began attacking the removal of the baskets. Guess what? These baskets were on very tight. Very tight. Too tight. I fought with these, and fought some more, and then fought even more. I couldn't remove them. I spent about an hour cutting the new pipe and fighting with the basket nuts. I spend about half of it yelling. I spent some of it drinking a beer (or two). So, after two Home Depot trips, $30, and a couple of hours of frustration I had a sink with no drains. Nice, huh? I just love home projects and plumbing. Since our sink is pretty old, I suggested to my wife that this would be a great opportunity to replace the sink and faucet. Well, it sounded better than admitting that I was really messing up the whole thing and that I was too weak to remove a couple of nuts. So, we made another trip to the Home Depot, picked out a nice sink, a nice faucet with a separate sprayer, new shut-off valves, and hoses. This trip took about an hour and a half, and cost $250. So now I have about one day and $280 invested in this thirty minute, five dollar project! (Anyone need a used sink and faucet?) Because this had been so frustrating, I decided not to tackle the installation of the new sink until the following weekend. I managed to get one side of the old sink back together, so we could get partial use of it for the week. So, the following Saturday comes along. I'm nice and fresh, ready to start over. I've thought about the problem all week. I have all new parts. What could possibly go wrong? Well, besides everything. I removed the old sink, installed the new valves, prepared the counter for the new sink, and everything was going real smoothly! I was feeling good. I set the new sink in place, did a beautiful job with the caulk, and was ready to just hook up the faucet and drains. Then I discovered that the drains of the new sink were about a half inch closer to the wall than the old sink drains! This made hooking up the drains into the traps very difficult. The sink bounced around, the caulking got ruined, and one of the traps began to wobble! Turns out that the threads of the pipe coming out of the wall on that side of the sink were also corroded. I decided to cut off a half inch, eliminating the corrosion, and shortening the pipe by the half inch that I needed! Well, my 20 year old hacksaw didn't let me down. I made it through the pipe, cutting crooked as ever, and now had no threads on the bottom of the pipe! I yelled at my wife. I sent my daughter to her room. I kicked the dog. I drank lots of beer. I sweated. Now I had spent two days on two weekends, $280, three trips to the Home Depot, and had a situation much worse than I started with. All for a 30 minutes, five dollar project! In the following week, I spoke with a plumber I knew. I told him of my failure as a plumber, as a handyman, as a provider, well, as a man. He got two parts out of his truck, charged me 20 bucks and explained how to fix the sink. I went home, and fifteen minutes later my sink was working. It's amazing what some good advice and the right parts will do! I'm a real man again. A hero. My wife looks at me and proudly says, "Great job on the sink, no one else would have had the patience to stick with it." Of course, my daughter still wonders why she was sent to her room. My dog still looks at me sideways. And, I haven't yet put all the cleansers and sponges back under the sink. I told the story of this wonderful adventure to my partner, Joe Heppler. He said, "See what happens when you don't hire a consultant?" Of course, perhaps putting a digital imaging system together isn't as daunting as repairing a kitchen sink drain. When your agency is ready to utilize the many benefits of digital imaging, contact Imaging Forensics. We can save you the headaches, wasted time, and high costs of doing it yourself. Or, if you are in the middle of a headache, we can help you out of that, too. |
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