Day 1928

 We got up a little after 8, did the pet stuff and had breakfast.  No gaming today.  It was in the lower 60's, so we went out to the apartment.

The first thing I did was cut out the "U" portion of the pipe where the leak was.  The Autocut pipe cutter worked fantastic.  It was a little bit of work to wrestle the pipe out from behind the girder.  There was a clamp holding it to the back side of the girder that I had to unscrew by feel.

I took the piece back into the garage to examine.  It turns out the leak was a failed solder joint in one of the elbows.  All of the joints were VERY poorly done.  It makes me worry about the rest of the plumbing.  I duplicated the U using pex and the four sharkbite elbows I'd purchased.  It wasn't very hard and the result looked great.  When I was done I took it into the house to show Ellen.  That's when I remembered that I needed to call Hooch.

I called Hooch and spent over an hour talking to him.  I told him the Spectrum and plumbing stories.  He told me a couple of stories about debugging his garage door system when he was automating it.  We talked about Mom's estate awhile.  Apparently the government is going to drag out its settlement for 6 months or more.  Hooch also expressed condolences about Lucy.

By the time the call ended it was almost noon.  I went out and encased my U in insulation.  Then Ellen came out and we went back to work.  I fit the U around the girder.  I managed to get the support reattached, but it wasn't easy.  Then I measured the pipe needed for one side of the patch and went into the garage to construct it.

The trouble started when I tried to fit the piece.  Preparing the copper pipe for assembly went well - dremel the inside, clean out the debris, and cleaning the outside.  Unfortunately I'd mismarked the insertion depth.  It was 1/8 inch too long.  This led me to pound on the coupling until I gave up.  When I tried to connect the other end, I didn't have enough room to insert the pipe in the connector.

I removed the patch by cutting off more copper pipe to give me more room to install the patch.  I too the patch inside to disassemble it.  Unfortunately the disassembly tool I'd bought was the wrong size, something I didn't noticed.  Ellen and I struggled for quite awhile trying to disassemble the thing before noticing.  We decided to buy the correct tool and another connector.

That meant a trip to Home Depot.  We almost got into a bad crash on the way.  I was driving by Walmart in the middle lane.  There was a line of cars in the right lane.  Suddenly a car came rushing out of a gap in the line from the parking lot right in front of us.  I had to swerve into the left lane to avaid him.  Luckily there was no one in that lane.  He came very close to hitting us.

We got the  parts at Home Depot along with some silicon grease to help insertion.  We also stopped at the post office and Mickey D's.  On the way back some guy decided he wanted to turn right from the left hand lane.  We were in the middle lane.  He pulled in front of us and slammed on his brakes because he couldn't get in the righthand lane.  Crap.

When we got home I measured the new pex pipe length and assemble a new patch.  When I took it out I found I'd measured the wrong length.  I took it back to the garage.  With the new tool it came apart easily.  I put on the new pipe and took the patch back out.  I prepped the copper pipe including grease.  It went in fairly easily.  The other end went in easily.  Pex definitely connects easier then copper.

The second patch went the same way.  I cut the copper pipe farther back because I wanted to use as much pex as possible.  I measure correctly this time and constructed the patch.  I prepped the copper and attached the patch.  The job was a lot easier than the first one.

By then it was after four.  I turned on the water, no leaks.  I went into the apartment and opened all of the taps to let out the water.  The shower and bathroom sink worked fine.  No water out of the kitchen sink though.  The turn off valves were off.  I'm not sure who did that.  I turned them on, still no water.

That was all I needed late in the day, but I wanted to debug it so I didn't have to worry tonight.  I went outside and looked at the pipes in the wall.  They looked fine.  I went back inside and tried the filtered water spout and the sprayer.  They both worked.  So I got a wrench and removed the filter screen at the end of the faucet spout.  It was completely blocked by black stuff.  With it removed the faucet worked fine.

I took the screen out to the garage and cleaned it oiut with compressed air and brake cleaner.  It was spick and span when I finished.  Then I put it back on the faucet.  Ellen helped all of this time.  She wanted to see a success also.

We went back into the house, fed the cats, and watched TV.  Dinner was leftovers.  After dinner I went out to close up the apartment.  We'd left it open all day to dry it out.  None of the patches showed signs of leaking.  Tomorrow I'll close up part of the walls, but might leave some of it open to look for leaks and to dry out for a couple of days.

When I came back in it was a little more TV and then some YouTube.