Plumber

The plumber was here today and did a bunch of small jobs and a few big ones. I cannot tell you how much this encouraged me and uplifted my mood. It felt so good to make some visible progress. One of the funny things about this house is that we actually now have regular maintenance in addition to remodeling to tackle.

Today the plumber fixed two drains that were slow not because they were clogged (they weren't), but because they were improperly installed to begin with. The horrible plumber I used for the remodel could not install them correctly even after several tries and the drains themselves were "modern" designs that are meant to be "cool" (i.e. they move slowly up and down seemingly mysteriously) when you use them. I think they'd be much cooler if they worked well and were easy to install.

He was not able to fix our cheap Ikea kitchen faucet which shuts off by itself. While I am generally pleased with my Ikea kitchen, the sink and faucet were not worth the bargain price. Eventually, we'll need to replace both. Fortunately, the faucet is a standard 1-hole mount, so that can be replaced with a nicer one at some point. The sink, which I got a great price on, turned out not to be a good idea. It's not a standard size because of an attached drain board, so when it eventually warps out of shape we'll need to get a custom one made.

The plumber also hooked up the water and ice maker on the fridge, which is so nice to have. The ice maker drives the dogs crazy. They love crushed ice, and the noise is weird for them I think.

He also installed an earthquake valve, which is great because the house should never have been without one. I don't know how this got missed when we had all of our building inspections, but I am glad it did. This was a really big job because the gas meter was under some concrete steps on the side of the house. Since there is not a better place for the meter, we left it there but had to alter the steps so that the meter could be worked on. The gas company said they need a 3' x 2' space in which to work, and we had nowhere near that. In fact the meter was only accessible from the side of the steps which would mean sitting in a hedge. Earlier, we had the steps demolished and rebuilt from redwood with a big trap door on top for access. Then we could get the earthquake valve installed. The valve will shut off the gas supply in the event of an earthquake. This is really important because most of the damage done in an earthquake is due to to fires and explosions not the shaking. It is a fairly simple device - there is a delicately balanced ball inside the valve and if the shaking gets too bad it knocks the ball off and blocks the gas supply line. If this happens, you need to reset the valve and then relight all the pilot lights in the house. We are hoping this doesn't happen because our prior incompetent plumber (not the guy who was here today, who is actually pretty good) installed the heater in a way that makes it very difficult to light the pilot. There is no way to correct it now, so we'll just have to live with it until we get a new water heater. Our next one will be tankless anyway, which can even be installed outside so it will be much easier to access.

We also had a camera inspection of the sewer line, which needs to be replaced. Fortunately, we are a candidate for trenchless replacement which is a great thing. All the houses on the street that were built when ours was have either had their sewer replaced or need it done. Our neighbors have 3 units on a lot just like ours, and they have the sewer professionally cleaned every month because it backs up. Yuck! It's really a ticking time bomb because it could fail at any minute, so we want to get it replaced before it fails.