#114 – Home repairs! Yay! - September 25, 2012

Tuesday.

The washer that came with our house (odd how common this is these days – we sold our washer and dryer with the house in Oregon, and received a set here) has an agitator.  And it worked ok on the clothes, but mostly it agitated Katrina.  So she went to Sears and picked out a new one after looking on Craigslist and finding not-very-good deals for several weeks there.  We got a call from Sears yesterday that the new washer had arrived and we could pick it up.

So Katrina listed ours on Craigslist for cheap.  See, we had trouble finding one that was a reliable front-loader for a decent price.  Sometimes they would list the washer for nearly full retail price.  The page is flooded with overpriced washers.  But she wanted ours gone, so she listed it for cheap, got a call, and the people were coming to pick it up today.

In preparation, she turned off the water to the washer and unhooked the hoses.  And then she saw water leaking, freaked out, and called me.  I had a busy day at work, but I went home for lunch.  The problem came from the valve on the hot water.  When Katrina turned it off, it started leaking.  We looked at it, turned off the cold water to and from the water softener, I stopped by Williams to get some parts, but they didn’t have anything I needed.  Then I went back to work.  After work, I went to Home Depot to get what I needed, and to Sears to pick up the new washing machine. 

The mall sits on the top of a hill.  The forest surrounds it on the North
and West.  The view grabbed me because of the sun streaming through
the clouds over the next set of hills to the North.

Back at home, Katrina went to the church for a craft night, and I started to try to fix the leak.  Home Depot doesn’t stock the exact same valve, so I couldn’t buy a replacement valve stem.  So I bought some Shark Bite fittings, and tools I needed to work with copper tubing.  And the learning began. 

I took this pic on my smart phone and took it with me to Home Depot.
It helped a lot to tell me that I was dealing with 1/2" pipe.
My main problem?  The section on the bottom (with the hose
on it) is 100% fittings.  So I couldn't cut the pipe
and put on my new fittings.  Grrrrr!

In the end, I spent over $100 in fittings and tools, 4 hours of working and driving to and from the store, and I still had a leak.  But I knew what I needed to finish the job.  I hooked up a short section of the backwash hose from the pool around the valve, so it could drain to a 5 gallon bucket and I went to sleep.