Today's home adventure started when I opened the door and stepped inside into a shallow pool. This would have been a great experience except I wasn't wearing swimming trucks. More importantly, I don't normally have a pool in my house.
Thanks to my washing machine hoses, water had gathered on the floor and traveled to the door to greet me. To show my thanks, I dashed to the washer and frantically twisted the shutoff valves to end my indoor waterway.
Because my house is almost 60 years old, all of the "shutoff" valves have aged into "reduce to a aggravating trickle" valves - the politest term I can type here. This means finding a bucket large enough to catch the continued flow of water while I rush to the store for plumbing supplies. So I disconnected those faulty hoses from the washer and shoved them into the washer's tub. Later, a run of the rinse cycle would remove all evidence of a leak.
With the errant water under control, I sped to my trustee low-priced venue. Lucky for me, Wal-mart is only five minutes away.
Amazingly, Wal-mart still sold the same brand of washer hoses that I installed two years ago - the same cheap "warrantied for 5 years provided you still have the original receipt" hoses.
Original receipt? Given Wal-mart's high quality fares, why would I hold to a receipt? Obviously, I must had bought a rare defective set of hoses. "What are the chances of another bad purchases?", I thought as I paid for my new set.
The scary part came after installed them. Water and plumbing have never been close friends of mine. So with my washer on the left side of my head and the hot/cold valves on my right, I scanned side-to-side inspecting each connection as I slowly turned the water on.
When I had the water pressure fully on and saw with no leaks, I breathed a sigh of relief. Success!
I then learned something new. When cheap hoses give way and begin drenching you in stereo, you can't shut the water off fast enough.
I ended up spending another hour doing what I should have done in the beginning: replacing Wal-mart's $14 pretend plumbing with Lowe's $20 professional set of hoses.
Fortunately, this time I had Wal-mart's receipt.
1 comment:
I admire that you have the capability to fix plumbing things. I suppose I could fix something as easy as hoses but we will never know for sure. My answer to all home repairs is call someone else to do it. (short of changing a light bulb...I would be willing to make that concession) My husband is slightly more willing to make minor repairs...but then I try to wait till he's off and about so I can call someone. Usually if he does a repair there is some swearing involved.
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