nash031
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Yesterday morning at 6:20, I noticed a drip from a landscape sprinkler connection outside our house. I said to myself, I said, "Self, I should epoxy that so it stops leaking." I ordered some wet epoxy online and intended to fix it later in the week or on the weekend.
Last night, at 7:30, I heard a loud *POP* and the distinct sound of water spraying outside. I knew immediately what it was... the PVC joint let go, and now water was spraying all over the place outside.
Like a good Sailor, I isolated the leak from the first valve possible, and attempted to provide an alternate path to control my "flooding." Unfortunately, the first isolable valve also happened to be the water supply line to the house... and I didn't get to tell my wife to use the bathroom before she left work!
No problem, disassemble the joint and plug the line, I thought.
Pipe wrench to PVC... PVC disintegrated, leaving the threaded portion in a rusted T-joint... which was stainless steel... which was connected to an adapter that was brass... which was connected to a pipe that was copper. Brilliant, thanks previous owner guy.
No hope of plugging said leak, I attempted a nipple extraction (this is the only place I can imagine that being a passable, legitimate statement), to no avail. The threads were in there good, and no chance to install the 3/4" PVC plug to stop the hole.
So... the water to the house remained isolated overnight. I'll call a plumber in the morning because once I have to start wrenching on pipes actually attached to the house, I'm in over my head.
I call said plumber, one comes out at 9:30AM.
After 20 minutes, he has diagnosed pretty much every plumbing problem I've fixed in the three years of owning this home to a failed regulator. Yes, that's right, 120psi water all through the house causes multitude issues. Oh, by the way, that isolation valve? Yeah, it was a gate valve that would only shut about 90% of the way, which is why I had a nice drip all night outside... and the piping was all jacked up from the installation and subsequent removal of a water softener and the new water heater.
Long story shorter... he fixed the outdoor problem pretty quickly and suggested a better way to connect the sprinkler than the Rube Goldberg project that was there before. He replaced the isolation valve and the regulator along with correcting the piping issues to a straight run of 1" pipe instead of the maze of 1-3/4-1" that was there, brazing and soldering all along the way... to the tune of $2000.
On the plus side, if you spread that cost over the life of the house, now 25 years old, it's not all that bad. On the down side, since this was apparently the first time the inlet plumbing had been looked at/fixed in that entire period, I got to foot the bill. Yes, the regulator was the original installed in 1989, and I got to see where the seal was failing and eventually going to flood my garage. The engineer in me was happy to see that I had correctly diagnosed a failing stem and a bound disc on the gate valve before ever seeing it.
Times like these make me wish I was a renter.
Or a plumber...
Anyway, $2000 got me a new regulator, isolation valve, about six feet of piping chopped/swapped (including drywall removal), a new gas flex plus fittings and valves on the water heater, removal of old Rube Goldberg and installation of new hose bibs and sprinkler connection outside the house. I know the parts added up to about $400 based on searching online... just wondering if you guys think we got fleeced in the pricing so I can be informed whether or not to use this plumber again. He did show me the pricing book he works from, provided a 10% military discount, plus another $100 off the "book price." The work is quality, he explained everything thoroughly and gave me options. I verified everything he was saying (failed this and that) with my own eyes, and he responded in less than an hour (non-emergency call).
Thoughts?
Last night, at 7:30, I heard a loud *POP* and the distinct sound of water spraying outside. I knew immediately what it was... the PVC joint let go, and now water was spraying all over the place outside.
Like a good Sailor, I isolated the leak from the first valve possible, and attempted to provide an alternate path to control my "flooding." Unfortunately, the first isolable valve also happened to be the water supply line to the house... and I didn't get to tell my wife to use the bathroom before she left work!
No problem, disassemble the joint and plug the line, I thought.
Pipe wrench to PVC... PVC disintegrated, leaving the threaded portion in a rusted T-joint... which was stainless steel... which was connected to an adapter that was brass... which was connected to a pipe that was copper. Brilliant, thanks previous owner guy.
No hope of plugging said leak, I attempted a nipple extraction (this is the only place I can imagine that being a passable, legitimate statement), to no avail. The threads were in there good, and no chance to install the 3/4" PVC plug to stop the hole.
So... the water to the house remained isolated overnight. I'll call a plumber in the morning because once I have to start wrenching on pipes actually attached to the house, I'm in over my head.
I call said plumber, one comes out at 9:30AM.
After 20 minutes, he has diagnosed pretty much every plumbing problem I've fixed in the three years of owning this home to a failed regulator. Yes, that's right, 120psi water all through the house causes multitude issues. Oh, by the way, that isolation valve? Yeah, it was a gate valve that would only shut about 90% of the way, which is why I had a nice drip all night outside... and the piping was all jacked up from the installation and subsequent removal of a water softener and the new water heater.
Long story shorter... he fixed the outdoor problem pretty quickly and suggested a better way to connect the sprinkler than the Rube Goldberg project that was there before. He replaced the isolation valve and the regulator along with correcting the piping issues to a straight run of 1" pipe instead of the maze of 1-3/4-1" that was there, brazing and soldering all along the way... to the tune of $2000.
On the plus side, if you spread that cost over the life of the house, now 25 years old, it's not all that bad. On the down side, since this was apparently the first time the inlet plumbing had been looked at/fixed in that entire period, I got to foot the bill. Yes, the regulator was the original installed in 1989, and I got to see where the seal was failing and eventually going to flood my garage. The engineer in me was happy to see that I had correctly diagnosed a failing stem and a bound disc on the gate valve before ever seeing it.
Times like these make me wish I was a renter.
Or a plumber...
Anyway, $2000 got me a new regulator, isolation valve, about six feet of piping chopped/swapped (including drywall removal), a new gas flex plus fittings and valves on the water heater, removal of old Rube Goldberg and installation of new hose bibs and sprinkler connection outside the house. I know the parts added up to about $400 based on searching online... just wondering if you guys think we got fleeced in the pricing so I can be informed whether or not to use this plumber again. He did show me the pricing book he works from, provided a 10% military discount, plus another $100 off the "book price." The work is quality, he explained everything thoroughly and gave me options. I verified everything he was saying (failed this and that) with my own eyes, and he responded in less than an hour (non-emergency call).
Thoughts?