unintended consequences

[lauradi7dw]

The sink in the downstairs half-bathroom has been dripping for ages, rapidly enough that it may have contributed to the rise in our water bill. I had hoped that my handy daughter would fix it (washers? string? whatever) when she was here visiting, but she demurred when she realized that there is no water cut-off under the sink. We wandered around the basement for a while trying to find the thing that cuts off water for the whole house, but gave up. I was about to call the plumber when I realized that he will have to do the same thing, and I'm not sure how much I'll have to do to make the basement pipes entirely traceable. Sooner or later, everything comes back to tidiness, or a lack thereof.

Comments

[luckylefty.livejournal.com]

When a pipe burst in the basement in our house in Sharon, I was glad I already knew where the shutoff valve was. Finding it in a basement already inches deep in water, while more was pouring in would have n pretty unpleasant. As would waiting for a plumber to show up while more water poured in.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

It turns out, logically enough, that the whole house shutoff valve is next to the indoor water meter, pretty much under where the outdoor thing for the meter reader is. I'm not sure that's a coherent sentence. The actual meter with numbers is in the basement. I wonder whether the outdoor thing is some sort of transponder. We additionally turn out to have a hot-water only shutoff valve in the basement on the same side of the house but much higher up. I had requested that they add a shutoff thing to the sink in question, but after a lot of fiddling and two trips to the supply place for old and then new parts, he was unwilling to do anything unnecessary, for fear of disturbing something that can't be replaced. He has warned me that the next time something goes wrong with that sink, the whole thing will have to be replaced, because they don't make compatible parts any more.