Sunday began with me deciding to replace the plastic "rainbird" type sprinklers I use in our front garden with zinc ones in the hope they would weather the weed-whacker better. I can't afford to put inground sprinklers in yet so make do with three rainbirds1. I'd bought the replacement sprinklers from Home Despot on Saturday and so was anticipating a quick installation, which was good because we were supposed to go out to visit friends in the afternoon.
Over breakfast I put batteries in the four timers I use to control everything. These are nifty little jobs that cost about 25 dollars each, run on 9v batteries that last a season and are really easy to set up. You rotate the dial and press a button to set the time. You rotate the same dial and press the same button to set in turn the start time for watering, the frequency you want it to open the tap (three time a day to once every two days) and the duration of the watering cycle. Then you screw the timer to the faucet and the hose to the timer and away she goes.
I have four "zones" (timers) so they have to be carefully synchronised so that they each use the whole of the water supply. Too many sprinklers and all you get is a dribble and a dead lawn. One controls the watering of the back lawn (oscillating bar-type sprinkler), one controls two rainbirds on the front lawn, one controls a fill-in rainbird that takes care of the dead-spot in the front lawn and the grass verges and one takes care of Mrs Stevie's flower beds.
There are only two outside faucets, so I have to use a bronze "duck's-foot" to split the supply into four, then I divvy up one again for a total of five so I can have permanent hoses set up for the pool area and the small west lawn where the Stevieling has her treehouse/slide.
Problem one was that I could not find the bally duck's-foot in the basement, shed or garage, and a half-hour was lost looking for it before I decided to soldier on and just set up the front and rear lawn sprinklers. The sun was shining for the first time in ages, and was making up for lost time. If I didn't get something sorted out I was in danger of a dead grass lawn, and Mrs Stevie has a demonstrated low-tolerance for those from previous years experience.
Problem two manifested when I went down in the basement to turn on the water supply to the east side exterior faucet (there are interior and exterior taps to avoid the danger of pipe burstage during winter). The interior faucet was a "gate" type2 that had been installed about the time India crashed into Asia, and as I turned it on a cascade of refreshing water fell upon my head and a pile of cardboard storage boxes stacked under the window. "Hooray!" I exclaimed and tried to screw the tap full open to bring the upper valve seat firmly into contact with the stem seal. Fortunately, the seal had broken up completely during the winter and water continued to fall about my head and shoulders. "How refreshing!" I remarked, and began moving the crap blocking access to the main shut-off valve. This crap included a bucket that proved to contain the duck's-foot, so I saw my luck was definitely changing for the better.
I decided to remove the faucet cap nut and replace the seal with a dome washer, which I knew I had in my drawer o' many useful hydraulic support pieces. It wouldn't be what was in there back before cord-impressed beakerware was fashionable, but it would work just fine. Accordingly, I applied a screwdriver to the screw holding the handwheel on. The screw, manufactured from some sort of iron oxide/calcuim alloy, crumbled leaving the wheel firmly attached. "What luck!" I said and went to find Mr Hacksaw. I knew that after cutting the stem there would be enough screw-hole left for me to "simply" grind a new square end for the handwheel to sit on with Mr Dremel since I had done this with the washing machine attachement faucets the day we moved in.
Mr Hacksaw made short work of the stem and I removed the capnut only to find the seat wouldn't unscrew. The broken bit was still firmly hidden inside the bronze casting. "What fun!" I said, and grabbed my Toolbox O Plumbing Paraphenalia. Mr Pipe-Cutter was retreived and used to good effect to excise the offending faucet and a few mm of pipe either side of it in two shakes of a Stillsons Wrench. Water cascaded out of each length of pipe all over me and the boxes, by chance avoiding the bucket I had set there to catch it. "It doesn't get any better than this!" I enthused, and set of for Home Despot for a replacement tap. I wasn't going to use a handwheel design though. Every time I have to do this sort of thing I replace the offending tap with a lever-action ball-valve. They have two major advantages over handwheel designs: They are easy to operate with little strength and they can be visually checked as to their on/off status by simply looking to see whether the lever is aligned with the pipe (on) or pointing down (off).
Halfway to Home Despot I turned the car round and went back to pick up the old faucet, which I had left on the coffee table3. Once at Home Despot I locked the car, then unlocked it, got back in and drove home to fetch my wallet, which I had left on the coffee table. Once I actually got into the plumbing department I discovered that all the ball-valve faucets were threaded-mount type, which would require an adaptor at each end so I could solder it into place. These they did not have. "How Adventurous!" I said and went to Arse Hardware . Who don't carry ball-valve faucets at all. "What foresight!" I said, and drove eight miles to the next Home Despot , where I located all the bits I needed, or so I thought.
Upon arriving home I discovered that with the ends screwed on tight the faucet was about 1/4 inch too short for the gap. I was also unsanguine about sweating the adaptors to the pipe with teflon tape wound on the screw threads, so I resoved to solder the threaded bits together, which I did using Mr Blowtorch. Then came the attempt to solder the resulting assembly to the water pipe. Ther pipe would not heat up enough to solder, and it became obvious the pipe was somehow full of water. "What a stroke of luck!" I said and disconnected everything. By pulling down on the pipe I found that there was indeed a trickle of water in it. I resolved to switch to Mr Oxy-Propane torch, which would put out so much heat the water wouldn't matter. Only problem with that theory was that there are major warnings about not using the torch with the O2 turned on without proper eye protection, and the donning of said eye protection made the basement completely unseeable, which would run the risk of me setting the house on fire. The pipes would have to be drained completely.
I nipped upstairs and opened all the faucets, then returned to the basement and powered up Mr Compressor. Once the reservoir was full of air it was the matter of a few minutes to blow out the water lines, with only the occasional kickback of high-pressure, rust-impreganted water which (naturally) went everywhere. "Supercalifragilisticexpiallidocious!" I said each time that happened. Once the lines were clear it was the matter of a few minutes to sweat the new fitting to the pipes.
For those of you who have never done this sort of thing, soldering pipes is fairly straightforward, provided you follow a few strict rules. You must clean the surfaces to be joined with either emery cloth or a purpose-made brush. The pipe needs to look like new copper, which is much shinier than when you buy it from the plumbing supplier. You need to do this to the inside of the sleeve-fitting too, which is why the purpose-made brush is a good buy. Once you have done that you must coat the surfaces to be joined with flux. The flux is an acidic comopund that will remove any microscopic corrosion you missed with the brush and help the solder flow. Then you heat the pipe untill you see the flame begining to take on a slight green colour. Then you apply solder and work it round the fitting by drawing it with the torch. Dead easy. Three minor caveats. It's hard to make the solder flow all around a pipe that has inadequate clearance between it an the (wooden) floor above it. It's hard to see that area you can't get to easily with the torch to check the joint. The only way to check the joint is by filling the pipe with water.
Which is when I discovered the pinhole leak between the new fitting and the pipe that went through the wall. "Splendiferous!" I yelled (recall that the pipe cannot be soldered when full of water). There was nothing for it. I would have to cut and drain the pipe, resolder the fitting and sweat on a coupling for the place I'd cut the pipe. At least I could leave the water turned on at the main now, which reduced considerably the fallout from the newly-arrived-in-theater Mrs Stevie. If her Krupps espresso machine was inoperable there would be blood in the water when I did turn it back on. When I cut the pipe I made sure to move the bucket so that the flood of water would miss it entirely. Then I had to use Mr Compressor again to clear the pipe of water.
That was when I dicovered that even though I could swear I had some couplings in the Toolbox O Plumbing Paraphenalia I couldn't find a single one, so it was off to Arse Hardware to buy some4. I needed one, so I bought four in case the rest of the day didn't improve.
I had some pipe stashed in the rafters so I cut a length of that to replace Old Mankypipe. The new pipe wouldn't fit in the adaptor, and I burned my hands in the attempt to make it fit (tolerances have changed since we standardised the inch, around the time the inhabitants of Salem were burning each other to death for entertainment) so I was forced to clean up Old Mankypipe and refit it. Which I did and it all worked rather well.
Letting out a whoop of manly triumph over all things plumbing, I rushed outside to continue installing and testing the sprinklers, only to find it was raining. I wasn't put off though, after all it was only spotting. I removed the plastic sprinklers and replaced them with the metal ones as the rain steadily increased in volume and force, and so it was that a mere three and a half hours after I started the job the neighbours were treated to the sight of me adjusting the the sprinklers in a howling thunderstorm.
The way I figured it, a lightning strike would be a vast improvement on matters.
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