Plumbing Stupidity

(NOTE: This post is suitably backdated...)

Those who know me well really know that I hate making mistakes. I mean I *really* hate it. Worse, of course, if someone else notices it before I do, or if its public in some way.

Maybe its an ego issue or just esteem. Whatever it is, it can really set me off.

Yesterday, for example, I finally replaced the float and valve in the toilet for the main floor powder room. The run-up to this story is that I bought the parts last weekend during the wallet-less run to Home Despot. I discovered that a couple of key parts were missing from the box. *sigh* While DW and The Boy were out, this weekend, I exchanged the box and got busy with the repairs.

The swap-out is a pretty straightforward task, really; but its somewhat labour-intensive, particularly when I need the pipe wrench to try and get the retaining nut off the pipe from the tank to the bowl. (I wound up having to break the thing out because it just wasn't loosening up, despite the persuasion of every "fixing word I know.

So, I get things assembled and put the tank back on and do the first fill of the tank.

Leaks.

Shit.

Okay, so I need to adjust the seals on the bolts holding the tank in place. No problem. I get the remaining water out of the tank, then pull the damn thing off again and tighten the loose nuts to get the seal seated.

Now let's try this again.

Re-mount the tank and start the fill. Leaks? Leaks? Nope. Okay. So far so good. Now let's see if the flush cycle works. YEAH!!

Feeling pleased with myself I packed up my tools and got back to my work stuff.

Sunday morning rolls around and I'm up before DW. When she gets out of bed, I'm on the computer, engaging in a little rampant despotism in Civilization III. She goes down to the basement to get some coffee from the pantry. I am summoned downsaits with an urgent voice.

Water.

Almost fucken everywhere.

As it turns out, yours truly - Idiot J. McPlumbing - didn't have quite the tight seal on the fitting from the water line running into the tank. So while I couldn't see any leaks where the mounting bolts were, I never checked the feed line and it ran, slowly and surely for the balance of Saturday afternoon through to Sunday morning.

I was most displeased with myself and quite chagrined. Actually, that's not true. I was pissed. Seriously pissed. Only at myself, of course.

However, the problem was easy to fix and the only thing that got wet was some spare hockey gear and some wood I had stored down in the basement. The leak area was near the drain in the concrete floor so it took care of the worst of the madness.

I felt pretty stupid for making a rookie plumbing mistake, but DW thinks I was being much to hard on myself and probably not keeping things in perspective. She's probably right. But I still feel like I OD-ed on stupid pills when I do dumb shit like that.

Needless to say I'm checking that fitting every so often. ;-)