OddThinking

When I moved in I realised the two toilets in the place had very slow drips.

I made a few half-hearted attempts to fix them, but I didn’t know what everything was supposed to look like, so I didn’t know what was out of place. I did some hopeful twiddling, but had no luck.

I resolved that, next time I needed to call a plumber over something important, I would add this to the list of things to look at.

I haven’t needed to call a plumber for a long while, so recently, I got fired up again, and this time I added Google to my toolbox. I read up on cisterns and their problems. I understood their function. I became at one with the treatments for their ailments. Turns out that, despite having different symptoms (hiss sound versus drip sound), both of the toilets had the same problem – a leaky gasket in the ballcock valve.

Friday morning, I disassembled a cistern, removed the faulty part, and popped into a hardware store on the way to work and picked up a couple of the rubber washers.

To my surprise, I found myself slightly excited all day at the prospect of getting home and solving this problem – this trivial, trivial problem that didn’t interfere with my quality of life – once and for all. How sad have I become when I get excited about spending a Friday night at home, fixing toilets?

When I got home I went straight to work, and knocked them both over in about 30 minutes. They work perfectly. Now that I know what level the water is supposed to reach, it fills me with joy that it actually sits at that level. I pondered how much I am going to save in excess water charges – my conclusion is that the $2.25 washers I bought should pay for themselves within a few short years!

Again, I was surprised at my emotions – I was inordinately proud of myself for fixing a toilet without having to call in a professional. Odd… Then it dawned on me. Oh my! I was feeling masculine! I’d become the man my grandfather wanted me to be. I thought I was sad before, but, in 2006, to think that fixing a toilet yourself makes you more of a man? Shoot me now.

Still, it made me think of plumbers in a new light. If everyone had this same misplaced sense of masculinity, plumbers must get all the women!

Err.. Sorry, where was I?

So I said to myself, “Well, if you enjoy plumbing so much, Loverboy, why do some of the taps still leak a little, even though you replaced the washers?” The taps didn’t need new washers – they needed re-seating, and I didn’t have a re-seating tool. It was on my list to get the plumber to do whenever he or she was called out.

Given that I am clearly too manly to need a plumber any time soon, I went out the next day and bought myself a tap re-seating tool. I re-seated three taps. The way those taps dripped, I reckon that tool will pay for itself in money saved in only 30 years. I am a plumbing god!

However, while restoring the mains water to my home after fixing the taps, I noticed that the meter was ticking over even when all the taps were shut. I have a leak! Hunting around, I found a copper pipe on an outer wall, leaking a steady trickle onto the roots of that vine tree which has been growing so well.

That is where my water bill money is leaking! Not the toilets. Not the taps. This copper pipe that I can’t fix.

I have to call a plumber on Monday. I feel so impotent! Gee, I hope the plumber’s not a woman! My ego couldn’t handle it.