![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Pre-Convention plumbing fun
Jun. 27th, 2005 10:36 pmThe countdown to Convention is taking up most of our time. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
excessor is at a committee meeting tonight, and tomorrow we'll be merrily stuffing registration packets at the Marriott. Wednesday is the "open mike" dance at ECR's usual dance hall -- it should be fun with many callers in town for calling school. Thursday we'll check in to the hotel and the fun begins. Of course we'll be working a lot of the time.
Today I tackled the tub faucet problems. We have three bathrooms, and the two that have combination tub/showers have always been troublesome; one has always been stiff (as well as hot/cold reversed) and the other completely froze shortly after we bought the house. Efforts to lubricate didn't work and I had not been able to get the faucet cartridges out without the special tool made for this purpose. I planned to hire a plumber to do it, since I was wary of using the whole-house shutoff valve, but I spotted the cartridge removal tool at Home Depot last week, so today I tackled the job.
The top item is the cartridge removal tool. The old cartridges didn't look all that bad, but the rubber seals were thoroughly mangled on the frozen one. Getting that one out required using a heating tool (hair dryer!) on it. The tool amounts to a corkscrew for cartridges; you screw it into the end of the cartridge, then rotate the handle, which pulls it out with the mechanical advantage of a larger screw. I used up two tiny envelopes of silicone grease on the seals (petroleum-based grease rots rubber) and put everything back together. Turning the house water back on, everything worked first time. Yay.
excessor is at a committee meeting tonight, and tomorrow we'll be merrily stuffing registration packets at the Marriott. Wednesday is the "open mike" dance at ECR's usual dance hall -- it should be fun with many callers in town for calling school. Thursday we'll check in to the hotel and the fun begins. Of course we'll be working a lot of the time.Today I tackled the tub faucet problems. We have three bathrooms, and the two that have combination tub/showers have always been troublesome; one has always been stiff (as well as hot/cold reversed) and the other completely froze shortly after we bought the house. Efforts to lubricate didn't work and I had not been able to get the faucet cartridges out without the special tool made for this purpose. I planned to hire a plumber to do it, since I was wary of using the whole-house shutoff valve, but I spotted the cartridge removal tool at Home Depot last week, so today I tackled the job.
The top item is the cartridge removal tool. The old cartridges didn't look all that bad, but the rubber seals were thoroughly mangled on the frozen one. Getting that one out required using a heating tool (hair dryer!) on it. The tool amounts to a corkscrew for cartridges; you screw it into the end of the cartridge, then rotate the handle, which pulls it out with the mechanical advantage of a larger screw. I used up two tiny envelopes of silicone grease on the seals (petroleum-based grease rots rubber) and put everything back together. Turning the house water back on, everything worked first time. Yay.
