Previous misadventures in plumbing

It occurs to me that recent events aside I’ve never really shared any of my various plumbing related stories of ill luck (well at least I haven’t done so here). I’ll spare you the minute details of every single instance where water ended up on my floor, or my things. Sufficed to say the place I lived before I moved to my wee little house was the ground floor of a duplex, and before that I lived in a basement apartment so I’ve grown used to water occasionally falling from my ceiling (and once in the basement apartment seeping up through my carpet). Come to think of it in the place I lived at before the basement apartment when water was drained out of the kitchen sink (such as after doing dishes) it would backup into the bathtub. However all those minor annoyances pale in comparison to the following.

Towards the end of my stay in the duplex the sewer backed up in a most spectacular fashion. The problem first became evident while running the washing machine (I seem to have bad luck with those as well); a little tip – when the water draining out of your washing machine comes rushing out of your toilet its probably time to call in a plumber. On the plus side that particular incident got me a nice set of new bath towels as I had to go buy several new ones to soak up the water on the bathroom floor since almost all of mine happened to be in the washing machine at the time.

My favorite tale of plumbing woe happened shortly after I moved into my wee little house. It was a Sunday morning, and I was taking a shower before work. I was at best half awake when I attempted the incredibly difficult procedure known as turning off the water and I did manage to turn off the cold water, however when I went to repeat the process with the hot water all knowledge of “righty tighty, lefty loosey” completely deserted me. I grabbed the knob with my left hand and turned, unfortunately I turned the wrong way, and instead of the water shutting off the knob came off in my hand. Imagine my surprise as I stood dumbly in my shower holding the broken knob while a jet of hot water was streaming out of my wall. I stumbled out of my shower wet, naked, and just a little bit confused and stared forlornly at the vertical geyser of water that was slamming into the far wall of my bathroom. A disconcertingly large amount of that water was being deflected down onto my floor and draining into the bathroom heating vent.

It occurred to me that I was probably going to be late to work, so my first action was to call there and advice them of the situation. The coworker I spoke to was very understanding of the situation when I explained it to him, it probably didn’t hurt my case that he could hear the water striking my bathroom wall over the phone. With that out of my way I set about trying to get the water turned off. I reasoned that since there was an access panel on the other side of the wall where the water was coming out that might be a good place to start. I looked around for a hammer or some other tool that would allow me to open that panel (it being conveniently nailed shut), and after a bit of a mad scramble around my house I did locate my hammer. Unfortunately upon opening the access panel I found no shut off valve. I set off on a second mad scramble to find a pair of shoes, and then quickly descended into my basement to search for the shut off valve. Naturally its location was surrounded by a rapidly expanding pool of water, and directly underneath the rather impressive shower being caused dually by the water leaking out of heating ducts and by the water running down the outsides of the water pipes leading back up to by bathroom.

With my basement safe from any further deluge I was free to see if I possessed any skill at plumbing. Sadly I met with only limited success. I was able reattach the knob to the water pipe in such a fashion that when the shut off valve was opened water didn't shoot out of my wall. Instead it ran out of the bath tub's faucet like you'd expect it to, however further turning of the knob didn’t cause the flow of water to diminish in any way, and worse yet turning the knob actually ran the risk of breaking the connection with the pipe leading to a resumption of the bathroom geyser, and the basement flooding. With no other way of stopping the running water in my bathroom I once again threw the main water shut off valve. As best as I can recall I was only ten minutes late to work. It was Tuesday before I was able to get anybody out to fix it, and much to my general annoyance the only thing that needed to be done to rectify the situation was the replacement of a small rubber washer that was likely washed down the drain when the knob originally came off the wall.

I do have an update to my chess match with Erik (I'm white, he's black):

Move  White   Black

32.     Rac1    RxR

33.     RxR     c5

34.     b5      . . .

Tomorrow will be the third meeting of the online Eberron campaign I'm taking part in. I leave you with the following picture depicting an event that I hope won't be inflicted upon any of the characters in the party (although it would be a better outcome then dying). I believe the picture is of Momochi Zabuza from Naruto.