Plumbing repair

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

As I suspected the old cast iron pipe had rotted out underneath the basement floor of my rental unit. My buddy Paul (who has his own plumbing company) stopped by to take a look, and after a few swings of the sledge hammer, found the bottom of an elbow joint completely corroded out to the point where the high flow rate from the spin cycle of the washing machine was forcing water out from under the foundation and back through the stone wall of the basement.

I told him to go ahead and fix the problem, as it …

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MJ on contractors.

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

Spurred by my recent plumbing problems, MJ wrote an excellent post on his blog concerning dealing with contractors, getting quotes, and following up on progress.

Anyone who’s never worked with contractors before will learn a thing or two based on MJ’s experience as a manufacturing engineer.

…any actual contractor should be able to cover all the costs of the work until it is complete, if it is a big project expect to pay 75% of the project costs when the work is 75% of the way done. In other words, the project should be close to finish at that point, and hold the last 25% for …

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Mama’s don’t let your babies grow up to be… plumbers.

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

So I made the handyman trip to my rental unit last evening after the tenant called and told me that the washer was spewing water all over the place.

A few things crossed my mind when she described what was happening:

The outflow tubing came out of the drain fitting and when the spin cycle started the water ended up on the floor instead of in the drain.
The outflow tubing disconnected itself from the pump.
The drain backed up and when the washer tried to pump all that water down the drain, it back flowed out the pipe.
The water pump case cracked and is leaking from inside the washer.

Any one of …

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