Google Me
When I built our palace over two decades ago, I installed a brass bathroom faucet for the marble sink surround we’d hauled by homemade sailboat across the treacherous straits of Saratoga from Whidbey Island. The spout of that faucet was a little shy of reaching completely over the sink so I was forced to do my first renovation. The faucet I replaced the first one with finally gave out, don’t get me started, but with a sigh I tore out the entire marble sink so that I could access the water inlets and the drain stuff, all that plumbing we hide in the cabinet and put out of mind until the leak starts.
I decided to win some gold stars from the mizzus with the next evolution of fixtures, so I bought a pricey little Kohler number. Kohler is a Wisconsin company and since we lived in their fair state long ago, we have even toured their factory and admired their half acre wall of toilets mounted horizontally like some art installation gone monumentally absurd with bathroom humor. It took me a day to disassemble and reassemble the sink, but it looked worth the effort once I stood back to admire my plumbing skills. At least until I turned on the water. A trickle like an 80 year old with advanced prostate problems dribbled out the spout. I turned both faucets full volume, but the flow stayed miserably small.
If you’re a modern handyman like myself, you go straight to Google and start asking questions where, hopefully, you will find real plumbers, not fellow idiots, responding with cogent and useful answers. I discovered, thanks to BillyBob Hosebib, professional roto-rooter from Boston, that my aerator was to blame for the low flow. He even told me the gizmo was difficult to remove and had a few helpful suggestions. God love Google!! Two hours later I had mangled my plastic aerator which refused to unscrew the way Billy B had told me it would. Undaunted, I managed to get a needlenose on the little blighter and got it far enough out to be able to snip it from its tube which was all one unit. Needless to say, I crushed the tube. A few hours later I opened the thing up, but …. apparently I had pulled the tube from some important connection and now no water whatsoever came out.
In disgust I threw the faucet out the back door in a small but cathartic rage, then drove 40 miles back to the big hardware store up north and purchased another faucet, but definitely not a Kohler with its cheesey plastic tube guts. No, I bought a nice little brushed nickel number. A day later and a couple of marble sink surround removals and installations later, I had that baby in and operational. I liked it, the mizzus liked it, guests liked it and so, we had another successful home plumbing project completed.
Until the power went out and the well sat idle. When the power returned, so did the grit and sand and loosened rust from the water lines. The new faucet now had very little flow too. I grabbed a shop vacuum and blew out the lines from the spout, reconnected the supply lines and now had worse water flow. I tried sucking from the other side, then blowing from the spout, etc. etc. When I finished, hardly any water came out. What in the name of Price Pfister !!??
So again I went to Google. Where I learned ALL new faucets now are mandated by FEDERAL LAW to have Low Flow. Which is fine if you are a city dweller on municipal water. But it’s a killer if you are on a well that pulls sediment and kicks grit when the power is off and comes back on. The Google experts recommended buying new valve cartridges if blockage occurs. Probably only 20 or 30 bucks apiece each power outage. Pretty easy to put in, they said. Not too expensive, they said. Easy for them, charging $100 an hour for their labor.
I could bore you some more. Hell, I could bore you for days telling you how I went and found an older faucet, pre-EPA, actually illegal now so that most recycle stores won’t sell you one unless you tell them you have a utility sink, something to do with lead content in the solder pre-2009. My first vintage faucet — and it’s too long and sad a story — was destroyed in the refurbishing. When I went looking for its replacement, I found virtually none so when I laid hands on two up north about 75 miles from home, I bought both. Call it insurance. Or just pessimism.
An hour ago I managed to put one of those in the sink, dropped the marble surround with it installed back down into his frame and turned on the taps. Not only didn’t it leak, but water roared out its spout, just another success story in my quest to be my own repairman. Sure it cost me two new faucets, three used ones and maybe 6 or 7 days of labor. Course I paid a psychological price too high to calculate. Probably it nearly cost me a marriage. But now I too can post advice on Google for fellow idiots to read and follow in my drippy footsteps. Home Repair: Not necessarily easy, but oh so very satisfying.
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