leaky faucets and broken sprinklers....

What a week! I woke up early monday to a gurgling noise. The sprinkler box is under our window. Outside in my robe at 3am I discovered one of the valves was gushing water...yuck. So, determined not to pay 150 dollars to have it fixed, I took a look. The valve box is unfortunatly located on the side of the lower deck next to the house, wouldn't be a problem if the upper floor of the house didn't extend over it! So, I took a quick cell picture and ran to the sprinkler shop up the street. Showing the man the picture I explained what was happening. He explained how to disconnect it and told me to bring in the assembly so he could outfit me with the replacement pieces. Getting it cut out wasn't the hard part. The hard part was the replacement parts were slightly larger then the originals, so they would be stable. That was fun! After 2 hours of pulling, pushing, blowing with a hair dryer ( not I'm not crazy, it makes the pvc more pliable to work with, which is great when your cramming a nozzle into it with a hose clamp!) and finally realizing I could detach the rest of the assembly fairly easily, I laughed. Pulled out the entire assembly, screwed it all together and put it back in. boy, if I had known that in the first place!

Today, I got smarter, we've had a leaky bathtub faucet. It started as a drip and has gotten progressively worse. It's driving me nuts, so I thought...how hard can it be? I googled ehow.com and searched for tub leaks. Bingo! A play by play video from a plumbing shop in Salt Lake! With lots of play and pause clicks I managed to get the right tools, get it all apart, and run to the plumbing shop for the replacement parts...not cheap! Why, a bunch of rubber can't cost that much! Anyway I replaced one entire assembly that had corroded pretty badly, and replaced the washers and seats on the rest. The diverter, (to turn the shower on) still drips in the tub a little when turned on (from the faucet) But if the waters off there are no leaks. And I wasn't about to pay 20 more dollars for another post! So, as long as it doesn't drip while I sleep I'll call it a success! So, productive and crazy, I still don't understand why we will pay a plumber 150.00 just to come out and change a valve!