When Ruth and I established our home on Kalamazoo’s Stockbridge Avenue, it didn’t have a shower and we were shower people. Sure, I had taken baths when there was no other option, but now that we were married, we needed a shower. I purchased the two-unit house before we wed, so I had to learn how to do things if I wanted to be a landlord. I couldn’t’ afford to hire everything out and tackled what I deemed to be simple projects to save money. Installing a shower was one such project.
The access for the existing tub’s plumbing was in a small closet. All I had to do was purchase a new faucet with a shower adapter, a shower head, a piece of galvanized pipe to make the extension, a couple of connecting elbows, and tear a hole in the wall. The trick would be tapping into the copper water supply lines. I’d never done that, so I explored my options. I didn’t trust my soldering skills, even though I’d soldered a joint or two in eight grade metal shop. I opted for compression fittings instead.
I opened the wall on Friday afternoon as soon as I got home for work. Once inside I surveyed the situation and made a comprehensive list of supplies. I planned to start first thing Saturday morning. Having a full day would allow for any extra last-minute shopping should I run into problems.
The short version is… I had problems. Installing the faucet, the access panel, extending the pipe for the shower head, and installing the shower head itself, went off without a hitch. I tapped into the copper supply lines and installed the compression fittings. Everything looked wonderful. The problem erupted when I turned the water on. Water sprayed everywhere. It seems the compression fittings weren’t compressed enough. I tried and tried to get them to hold, but I failed all day Saturday. I ruined several in the process.
It was an old house, built in the late 1890’s, so there were very few shut off valves. While we still had water in the kitchen, and our upstairs tenants had water, we had nothing in the bathroom, which made flushing the toilet Saturday night a challenge. I had to haul water from the kitchen to the bath to fill the toilet’s tank. It was a pain.
I made my umpteenth trip to the hardware store on Sunday morning. The store didn’t open until noon, so I got a late start. It wasn’t until my fourth or fifth Sunday try that I reached success, but I did just before it was time for bed. Mission accomplished and lesson learned.
A few months later, Ruth and I went away for a long weekend. When we returned, I took our suitcases to the basement. I was puzzled by the bits of white paper that covered the floor. I looked everywhere to find the source. Our tenants could access the basement if they wanted but that was very rare. I checked with them to see if they did indeed wander down, but they hadn’t.
I checked for leaks around the clothes washer, the windows and ceiling but couldn’t figure out the dilemma. I called for Ruth’s assistance and asked her to run the water in the newly installed shower. Nothing happened. She followed that by running the water in the bathroom sink. Still nothing.
Finally, I asked her to flush the toilet. That’s when the tides rolled. I was standing directly beneath the drainpipe that ran halfway across the basement ceiling. I was drenched in water from the toilet. The tiny bits of white on the basement floor were toilet paper. I couldn’t see where the water was coming from, but I sure felt it. Upon further inspection, I discovered the top of the eighty-year-old cast-iron drainpipe had rotted away. The water was running out the top of the pipe. The pipe could handle the slow steady run from the sink or bathtub, but it spewed the rush caused by a flush of the toilet. Replacing this pipe was over my head, (pun intended) so I called my first real plumber to complete the job.
Knowing what you can and can’t do and recognizing what you’re willing to try before calling for assistance, are important matters in home ownership. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found my cell phone to be my most important tool.