Defeated By Plumbing

As always, my trips back to my parents' house involves various home repairs. They all started out quite well--the dining room window has required a stick to prop it up for, well, as long as we've lived there (1976... wow). I realized, "Hey, I can fix that!" Some surgical prybar work and a sash spring later, a working window!


New doorbell, no worries; water filter; ordered a new part. And then unclogging all the drains in the upstairs bathroom (sink, bathtub, shower). Yeah, ewwww.


The shower unclogging operation required a bit of persuasion to the plumbing--stuff that appeared to be concrete was in the drain, which required scraping out with a metal bar. However, later on that night, mom reported dripping from the living room ceiling, below the bathroom. Uh oh....


So there I was, sawing holes in the ceiling of my parents’ living room at 10 PM, with lukewarm brown water running down my arms into my shirt. It was especially frustrating, knowing that back at home, I had at least three tools that would be doing a faster, better, and cleaner job. As well as knowing that I couldn't take a shower to wash this stuff off.

I excavated the leaking pipe and found... uh oh, lead pipe? WTF? Wow. I’ve done plenty of plumbing, including black iron threaded gas pipe, sweated and compression fitting copper, CPVC, PEX… you name it. And as for drain lines, I’ve huffed more than my fair share of PVC and ABS cement, put together hubless fittings for cast iron, and sweated copper DWV. But lead pipe? Crap. That’s a whole new one to me. It appears that lead's strengths are corrosion resistance and formability; however, it is hurt by high cost, physical weakness, and creep (tendency to flow at room temperature, resulting in "sagging" pipes). Apparently, I had made a horizontal tear in the pipe while trying to unclog it. Grr.

Repair take one: Mission hubless coupling, with a sheet of rubber to act as a gasket. You'll notice what a wonderfully accessible spot this whole setup is--one side of the pipe tight up against a floor joist, and tucked in above a set of bookshelves. And the hole is on the side facing away from me.


Unfortunately, no dice--my guess is that the lead pipe is malleable enough that the gasket really didn't seal against a round surface--it just crushed the pipe, slightly.

Repair take two: sand off the pipe, and use PC-Plumbing™ Putty Epoxy--“The Impossible Made Easy”--not a bad slogan. Set it up, and... nope, still a trickle of a leak. Holy crap was I pissed.


After staring at it for a good long time, I was forced to give up and drive back home. It's hard to describe how much of a defeat this feels like, leaving it in my parents' hand to call a plumber to fix.

Man… this whole experience makes me realize that my attitude towards home ownership is converging with my attitudes towards babies—amusing at times, not bad to borrow, but maybe I’ll pass on being responsible for one, myself.