The Magic of Plumbing, another dark art.

I hafta let ya know that I'm one of those people who has to try to fix everything themselves, I know a bit about a lot of stuff but probably not enough about anything.

But

I hate plumbing,

Plumbing and me just don't get on.

I had the misfortune to have a leak spring in the shower unit over one weekend recently. Being of rather large dimensions, I slipped in the shower and nearly pulled the thing off the wall, gravity being what it is. (I read once that it's a myth, that the earth sucks)

Looking at this thing with pure dread I took off the cover of the Triton power shower (AS 1000 to be exact) and had a look. The thing, to be fair, was ten years old and had seen a lot of use.

There was water flying in all directions, but the problem was a little piece of plastic that had broken off that held on the two inlet valves for the hot and cold supplies (This unit doesn't heat the water merely pump it through very fast, an absolute dream of a machine designed to flay one with water, a massage for the back after a hard days Munster favourite pastime, kicking the daylights of one another on the rugby pitch).

I shut off the water leaving the Boss screaming in the shower upstairs, turned it on again to allow for the rinse of the hair and shut it off again. I called Mike the plumber as I had to get myself to Dublin for the night and to be honest I didn't want to chance the thing myself, dreading having to mess about with brass compression fittings and the like. I got myself off into town to get the replacement shower, having an hour or so before I had to leave.

Now due to a unfortunate (or fortunate depending on point of view) happenstance the replacement had a cover that couldn't be removed due to a rather innocuous screw which just wouldn't come out and the replacement had to be replaced which leads me to the crux of the matter. I had organised Mike the plumber to have the water shut off and the pipes removed by the time I had got there with the first replacement, but it being the weekend he couldn't stay after we discovered the cover problem but left uttering those famous last words
"Sure you can do that yourself, What are you worried about?".

I replied with a tirade about brass fittings and ptfe and the like. He stopped me mid stream with the words "What are you talking about? All the fittings are push-fit now for god's sake, a dog with a mallet could plumb now, it's putting us all out of business". He then gave me a list of pieces to get and said "Now have a cut at it yourself and give me a ring if you have any problems".

I got the second replacement, moved up model the second time around with fancy thermostatic controls, the works. Having left with the usual statement of "that's knackered, It'll hafta come out, Might as well get the second one" but herself said "have a look at the website to see if you can get the part". When I finished cursing myself for not thinking of it first, I clicked on the Triton website and managed to get a replacement part for a ten year old shower (To my great surprise, God bless em, I'm a fan for life after that). It arrived after a week, I had the part replaced in ten seconds, two screws and "WOLLAH" (Pardon my French).

I ended up buying two push fit elbows, some Qual-pex piping and had the Shower put back in, all complete in less an hour while the Boss had version 1 at a school concert. Time to sit back and have two mugs of coffee and still look sweaty when they returned. That includes the reconnection of the wiring and all.

This is just not right... My fragile psyche cannot cope with the simplicity of it all.

I kind of miss having skinned knuckles, being allowed to scream abuse while the boss explains to the kids that "Daddy's working dear, come out of there it's dangerous" and that drip that no amount of PTFE tape or Boss white jointing compound will stop. That one turn too many of the half inch nut that crushes a brass olive to render it useless. Those horrible things known as Poly-adapters for use with brass fittings and Hydrodare pipe (They always, always, always leaked whenever I used them but have finally been replaced with plastic connections that I can get to work).

Theres no mystery left to plumbing any more, no more black arts. It's all just too simple now.

SOB......

I have to bring back my thermostatically controlled beauty of a replacement...

I'm disgusted...