Brandon the Plumber

Yet another D.I.Y. project completed successfully! What started out as a "simple" "1-hour ,max!" project, quickly turned into a 2-hours past bedtime, call the plumber the next day and wait around the house all day for him, find out the plumber doesn't know what's going on... project!!!

I came home to a simple request: "Hooooonnnnneeeeeyyyyy..... the hot water faucet in my tub drips hot water on my toe while I'm taking a bath... do you think you could call our home warranty company and have it fixed while you are at home this week???" Heh, simple enough...

"No, sir, I'm sorry, but we cover the *PIPES* only not the fixtures... your problem sounds like it is with the fixtures", said the Customer *SERVICE* Rep. on the phone...

Ok, I thought, no big deal... I'll just grab my trusty $29.94 Home Depot "Fix-Everything-In-Your-Home-Yourself-Book-With-Nothing-More-Than-
A-Hammer-And-Screwdriver-And-Us-Here-At-Home-Depot!" book and look up the references for leaky tub problems... oooohhh, look here... it says here that water leaking out of a handle means the "stems" are worn out... just go to Home Depot, buy new stems, and in less than an hour you'll be good as new! "WOW," I said, "what's an hour??? It sounds so simple!"... "yes, in fact, lookie here, it even says: 'Difficulty: 1 out of 5'... I like simple!"

So off I went to Home Depot with one of my handles to try and match up to get the parts...

Turned out, the Home Depot guys said my hardware is REALLY old-fashioned... they didn't sell most of the stuff for my tub, but they *DID* have the stem and shiny new knobs... just what I needed!

First problem: new springs were longer than the old ones... and they really just didn't seem to fit... oh well, I'll just use the old ones...

Second problem: after installing the new stems, turning the water to the house back on: TADA!!! No more leak! Out of the handle, that is... but now the entire faucet leaks!!! A LOT!!!! No matter which way I turn the knobs, I can't get the water to stop! After turning the house water on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off I don't know how many times, and pulling out the stems, switching the parts around a bit, turning the stems around, trading the stems... combining them in almost countless ways that surely the manufacturer neither intended nor imagined, still no luck: WATER ON, NEVER OFF! Ok, no big deal, says I... I'll just put all the old hardware back in, turn the house water back on, and tell "sweetie" to just not put her big toe under the handle next time she takes a bath!

No luck.

With the old hardware installed, still WATER ON, never water off!!! Two hours past bed-time, I secured the water to the whole house, told "sweetie" she'd have to go to work 'au natural' tomorrow, and went to bed...

The morning didn't start out much better... I called the plumber we used in the past... he didn't answer... it's 7AM and this is this guy's own business, why isn't he answering??? I left a message too... 8:30AM, no return call... I call one of the plumbers in the book that state: "On-site in 45 minutes or less, GUARANTEED!*"... but they said "ok, we can be there in 4-8 hours"... turns out, I missed the fine-print that stated: "*Call for details" -- uugggghhh!!! After calling numerous of them, and getting the same thing, I settled on one that said 2-4 hours... as it turns out, they didn't get here until about 5 hours... pathetic...

He tinkered with it a bit and said "$178!", and I said "whatever, just fix it!" -- he tinkered with a bit more and said "oh, you've just installed the hardware backwards, I'll just put it in the right way and charge you our $69 service fee"... "whatever, just fix it!" I said. He tinkered some more and said "nope, turns out you've got the WRONG hardware altogether... I'll give you the old hardware and the address of a shop that sells the old stuff, they'll hook you up and I won't charge you anything"... "kewl, says I, but I'm leary..." -- so off I went to the "old" hardware store...

And in that store sat an "old" plumber... and he heard my story and said "look, here's the hardware that I'm gonna sell you, and here's the piece that you are going to put it into... show me how you are doing it back at your home"... and so I did...

And, as it turns out, after aaaaallll those many, innumerable combinations and ways that I installed that hardware, I missed *1*... and it just so happens, it was the *RIGHT* one: I had installed the seal before the spring instead of the spring before the seal!!! Uuuuugggggghhhh!!!!

They really need diagrams to go with all this hardware, I mean HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW??? You see, with computers you just don't have this sort of thing... everything is label "TAB A" and "SLOT A" and you just match the two up... you know if you are putting the wrong things together because "TAB A" obviously wouldn't hook up to "SLOT B"...

But, yes, my tub works great now, and it doesn't drip, and "sweetie's" big toe won't get burned anymore (which, BTW, I am very grateful for, even if my humor here sounded a little pointed! Hehehe...) -- and if you read this whole story, you are either my mother, or very very very bored and you deserve a medal! Hahahahaha... HI MOM!!! :)