September 16 '96

Volume 13


Things That Go Bump In The A.M. 

First a cat keeps me awake nights in Greenville, and now something else has found a way to annoy me in the mornings. As I prepared to go to work last Monday, I kept hearing a rattling or vibrating type noise..brat.at.at.at.at.at. My first thought was my pager on the chest of drawers was in vibrate mode, and I was being paged, but the sound did not come from that area. It really seemed to be coming from outside.

Our neighbor’s dog often plays with a plastic bucket that he drags around and bangs on, so I thought maybe he had found a new annoyance and was the contributor of the sounds. Barbara does not hear low pitched sounds as well as I do, but she, too, noticed the racket and asked me what it was. I explained that I thought it was the neighbor’s dog.

Since I was running a little ahead of schedule, I took time to wash and squeegee the windshield of my car. I heard the sound again, and it seemed to be around back of the house. I walked to the backyard and did not see the neighbor’s dog anywhere, nor could I locate the racket maker. After a moment, the sound occurred again, only now it sounded like it came from the side of the house. I checked the side, but nothing was there. I decided to look on the roof . I walked into the edge of the flower bed that lies adjacent to the fence of the dog, to get a glimpse of the roof at the back of the house.

Because the water heater in our house is gas fired, a vent is required. The contraption that attaches to the top of the water heater and extends through the roof for about 2 feet, has a flat top with 4 beveled sides containing air vents. There atop the vent, sat a large adult flicker, a member of the woodpecker family. I could see warm air currents rising from the vent. Why the bird chose this for a perch

escapes me. Perhaps he just had cold feet, but perhaps the rust color of the vent fooled him into thinking he was on a wooden surface. He continued to hammer his bill against the metal surface and produce the same noises I had heard earlier. My strange sound source now located, I got in the car and left for work.

You have to wonder who the first person was to use the derogatory phrase, ‘bird-brain’ to taunt a less than intellectually gifted human, but when you observe a woodpecker drilling away at a piece of rusted sheet metal, you can sort of understand the meaning behind the phrase. There are probably a few ornithologists who would declare the creature just did not get ‘the proper’ amount of nutrition back in the nest. There are probably at least a handful of animal rights activists who, if they knew what had taken place, would want to haul me into court for not taking the necessary precautions to prevent the woodpecker from having a landing platform on my vent, thereby, in my negligence, providing a climate ripe for injuring their client and depriving said client of said client’s means to earn said client’s livelihood.(Diagram that, if you please.)


DIY Plumber

Early Saturday morning, my wife said to me, "We need another one of these things that fits on the end of the kitchen faucet."

"What’s wrong with it?" I asked.

"It sprays water," said Barbara.

"I thought it was supposed to," was my sarcastic reply.

"From here?" she questioned while pointing to a thin stream of water that was somehow exiting sideways from the bottom of the faucet aerator, oblivious to the fact that the rest of its water buddies were plunging straight down into the sink below.

"Aw, it just probably needs a good cleaning," I chided.

Still smarting from having paid a Greenville plumber $60.00 to replace a washer in a simple bathroom faucet, I decided to handle this chore myself. After all, it would not require special tools or turning off the water to the house at the water meter. Finger pressure alone would not allow me to remove the aerator, so I fetched a pair of pliers. Actually, they were vice grips, because Jason has been working on his classic automobile just often enough to have misplaced practically every tool or wrench that I once had a pretty good idea as to where it could be found in our utility room.

It does not take any special skill or plumbing knowledge to disassemble, inspect and clean away any particulates that may have collected inside an aerator. It does, however, take a big man to recognize when something should be replaced and not just shorn up, thus delaying the inevitable. In making this determination, it is also a big help to the big man, when that which is in need of replacement, doesn’t respond to the treatment given it.

The water hydrant outside my backdoor, and just inside the carport had developed a hairline crack in its casting in the past couple of weeks, so I decided to find a replacement for it while I was shopping for an aerator. I drove over to a plumbing and electrical supply store to make the needed purchases.

"Naw, we don’t have one of those," said the clerk. "Whose got one?" was my terse response.

The young clerk replied, "I don’t know, but they might have one down at True Value Hardware."

I wondered, "What kind of plumbing place does not sell faucet fixings?" as I drove to the hardware store.

Not only did the hardware store have them, they had an assortment of them. They even had a sizer with threaded holes, so you could figure which size you needed by testing the old one. As Paul Harvey would say, "Now that’s, that’s, that’s True Value." The hardware store owner even pointed out which outdoor faucet he sold was American made and which was imported. I chose the American made product. The owner asked if I did this kind of work often. "No more than I have too," I replied, as he pointed to the pipe dope (a compound for sealing pipe connections). "I’ve got the Teflon tape or the squeeze tube, One is 89 and one is 99," he stated. I selected the tape. (Less mess you know, and the principle reason that I am not a plumber today is hinged on the word mess. Okay, I don’t like spiders, and snakes either, and either can be found in the areas where plumbers are often called to work.)

The aerator installation was quick and simple. The outdoor faucet replacement would require turning off the water at the water meter. The water department folks have a special tool that makes quick work of turning off the water supply. I don’t own one, but I think there should be a law that states ‘a house can not be bought or sold unless the water supply turn-off tool is included’. It should be included in the cost of the water hookup of all new homes, too. Without this simple tool, a simple task can assume gargantuan proportions.

The last home of my parents had more than its share of inadequacies. It did, however, have a satisfactory solution for shutting off the flow of water to the house. That old house was built on a foundation with the floor about 3 feet above the ground. In a back bedroom there arose from the floor a metal rod that formed an upside down L and provided the leverage needed to shut off the water valve under ground and vertically below the bedroom floor. Occasionally a child might dislodge the rod from the small square hole into which it so neatly fitted in the water valve. Most of the time, the rod could be manipulated into place short of making a trip under the house. "They don’t make’em like they used to" seems to fit about here.

My water valve is sunk about 18 inches below the ground and is functionally inaccessible for a pipe wrench. It is enclosed by a cast iron device that supports a removable cover and forms a retaining wall around the water meter’s digital dial and oft buried water valve. By clever manipulation of a crescent wrench combined with a pipe wrench, a few ‘busted’ knuckles, several grunts and groans, at least one inaudible ‘cuss’ word, and a pinch of patience, the task of shutting off the water supply was accomplished.

The removal of the exterior water faucet and the installation of the replacement faucet was a breeze compared to getting the water shut off. Close wrench work alongside the brick wall from which the faucet protrudes, kept me cautious of my bleeding knuckles. The Teflon tape did a neat job as a pipe sealant. The work required to reopen the water valve was somewhat less than that required to close it, but was by no means a simple task.

The feeling of accomplishment, the satisfaction provided by a successful do-it-yourself project, helped to offset the earlier sense of exasperation. The monetary savings are negligible if you put a dollar value on your own time to complete a project such as this, but it is the independent and self-reliant spirit that carved a nation out of this land we call America, that makes such tasks enjoyable.

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