This is my post for #freewriters Thursday prompt not a boy hosted by @daily.prompt
Last night our oldest daughter called and said the water company called her and said that she has a major water leak at her house, they said this month she has used 8,800 gallons of water. I am scared to think what her bill will be.
She is single and knows nothing about how to fix something like this. She found the leak and told us that the pipe was PVC going into a metal pipe on the outside of her house. We thought it must be galvanized pipe. My husband said he would try to fix it, so we gathered the things that we thought were needed.
When we got to her house we found that it is PVC but it is not a galvanized pipe, it is copper. We had most of the items to fix it at our house but she lives 45 minutes away. She left her card for me to buy what she needed.
We go to Home Depot and got sticker shock, the soldier was almost 25 dollars for one small coil, we have 6 coils at home. For a small piece of copper tubing, the price was 17 dollars. At home, we have 2 torches, we had to buy one for 18 dollars and the gas canister was 6 dollars. With all the fittings and sandpaper it came to 95 dollars. We felt bad but did not know what else to do. I texted her and she said it was ok.
My husband soldiered all of the fittings to the copper pipe and we turned the water on, it leaked because before soldering the upper fittings, my husband was to screw the bottom fitting onto the PVC. He was so mad at himself, saying he is not a boy anymore, he is too old to be doing things like this, and he says his brain does not work like it used to.
After throwing a little fit, and borrowing a torch from a neighbor, he got the top fittings apart so he could turn the new piece of pipe to screw it onto the PVC pipe. The torch we bought was a piece of crap, it would not stay lit, and this really aggravated him.
With it all put back together, we turn the water on and saw no leaks, I hope this was the only leak she had. A few years ago a pipe that ran under her slab had a leak and she had to hire someone to re-route the pipes. I do not know what it cost her but I am sure it was not cheap. My husband was telling me that his sister had to call a plumber for something and it was over a Holiday, it cost her 800 dollars.
With the mood my husband was in, I knew better than to take pictures of him working on it.
photo is mine