Puttering, and other putterances...

[alexpgp]

This past week, Galina called my attention to a spot in the water line that goes from the basement to the hose connection near the garage door. I vaguely remembered our former tenant saying something about a pipe that had started to leak "in the basement," but was unprepared for what I saw.

The joint had come completely apart, and in such a way that the ends of the pipe segments did not even overlap. Casting my glance down the length of the line, I saw another joint that looked pretty grungy, as if ready to come apart. Assembling the required repair hardware, I took a pipe cutter to the line. The grungy-looking joint actually came apart in my hands before I was able to cut the pipe behind it.

The replacement line was going to be built from piping that had become redundant when the old heating system was replaced with a new air heating and cooling system, and thus, three joints were going to be required. When the work was done and everything had cooled down, I gingerly opened the valve to the garage hose line (the original builder of the house must've been a submariner, because there are valves scattered all throughout the piping system).

My joints held, I think. What didn't hold was the tear in the line down near where the line turns to go down the wall to the hose fixture. Once I got the flooding under control, it became apparent that the line in the garage had well-and-truly been exposed to sub-freezing temperatures, enough to rupture the pipe.

More repair work is scheduled for next week, once I figure out how to replicate the bend in the pipe.

* * *I don't know if it's still going on, but if you've got a free Dropbox account and don't mind uploading large quantities of photos from your camera, the service is offering to expand your free storage allowance by up to 5 GB if you agree to try out what they describe as an experimental build and use the camera upload feature. Details (and the build) can be viewed here.

Cheers...

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

Too bad it requires an Android phone.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

That's not been my experience.

I uploaded almost all the new data from my iPhone. (I was also able to use my Canon camera, but that required me to hook the camera up to the computer for the duration of the upload, and that sucked down the battery.)

Cheers...

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

I was just going on their FAQ.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of the outlet pipe under my kitchen sink which had corroded away completely before we figured out anything was wrong--of course, since it was in the underside, a visual inspection that showed the damage would have been hard to do.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

The underside and the parts you can't see are always a problem, especially with it comes to making the joint.

When I took a good look at the joints, I came up with the hypothesis that my old man didn't do the work, because his solder joints were pretty lavish with the solder.

Cheers...