plumbing

I was still in bed this morning at 7am when Dorothy informs me of a leak in the kitchen. I was in the bath room washing up when she came back in and said, "You'd better hurry!" Now, when she told me about the leak the first time her tone of voice made me think it was a drip, drip kind of leak. The second time I thought, "Uh, oh. This could be serious". The water was spraying out into the kitchen floor from the dishwasher supply line. I turned off the hot water at the tank and evaluated the situation. One of the plastic fittings was cracked. That shouldn't take long to fix. I took off the fitting and took it to town and found a replacement. I put it on using ample teflon tape to seal the threads, and it leaked. So I reevaluated the situation. All that section of pipe and fittings were at least 15yrs old, dating from the time I installed the dish washer, so I cut out the entire section of pipe and fittings and back to town I went. I installed a new section of pipe, fastening some with a pipe wrench, and gluing others together with PVC glue. It leaked. So I re-re-evaluated the situation. I think one fitting was put together without enough glue, so I cut that section out and back to town I went. Well, I brought back the proper fitting plus some PVC primer that I should of used earlier. I slathered those fittings with primer and lots of glue (I'm still pulling the dried up stuff off my skin), tightened the teflon taped threads with all my might, waited about twenty minutes, turned on the water, and laid there in the floor staring at the pipes, just dreading the sight of a bead of moisture forming and dropping to the floor. Convinced that it had finally worked, I got up with great difficulty (my knees and back were aching) and looked at the clock. It was 6pm. I had spent all day, up and down, cutting and gluing, driving to town three times. I'm tired!


The grey pieces are the offending fittings and below you can see the replacement apparatus after a successful installation.