Apartment Manager Adventures

Being the man of the house, I do the majority of the maitenance in the building. I like to think that I’m pretty good at most common maintenance items. I have a decent knowledge of most of the buildings problems. I install dishwashers, do electrical repairs, patch holes in walls, fix tiles, install lighting fixtures, etc.

By far, my worst category of repair is plumbing. Most of the time I stumble through things just fine installing disposals, repairing pipes under the sink, replacing sink faucets and valves. But plumbing problems have certainly been what give me the most trouble and frustration.

Today, I’m going to tell you about what I consider the worst experience I have faced with plumbing. You see, there was an apartment that had a slight drip coming from the shower faucet.. It was an unusual drip. It would only drip if the knob was in a certain position. I have replaced this type of shower valve in the past in other apartments, but…

  … I couldn’t figure out how to shut the water off in that apartment (for some reason, many of the apartments in the building are unique in the way the shut off valves operate, or where they are located.) I tried, and tried, and the best I managed was to get the hot water to the apartment half way shut off.

Frustrated, I returned to the shower to see if maybe there was something I could do without shutting off the water (rookie mistake) Well, the shower valve uses a valve cartridge like the one pictured below to control the hot/cold water with one knob.

 

My thought was… (and I find this pretty embarrassing now) maybe the drip will stop if I just remove the retaining pin (The thing that holds the valve in against the water pressure) and rotate the valve 180 degrees so that different parts of the seal are hitting the pipe in different ways. (Hopefully getting the drip to stop).

Now, just a quick bit of background: The apartment was vacant, and I was the only one in there. My wife was working on projects of her own in our own apartment.

So I’m sitting on the edge of the tub and I removed the retaining pin. Everything’s going fine. I took my Leatherman Pliers and started turning the valve. Immediately, the valve comes shooting out of the pipe and a half inch stream of water started blasting out of the pipe. It was shooting straight across the tub, hitting the tile on the back wall and just splattering all over the bathroom.

This was bad. Really really bad. My mind was racing. What do I do? I’ve got water blasting out of this pipe at near full power (Full cold and half hot) its starting to flood the floor,  there is no one around to help me, and I don’t know how to get the water to the apartment off. I debated about letting the water just do its thing while I tried to run into the basement to shut off ALL the water to the ENTIRE building (30 apartments). But at the rate that the water was coming out, I felt that would do too much damage to the unit.

So, I tried pressing my palm up against the pipe to see if I could hold the water in by pressing hard enough. It was a no go. The pressure was much to great to stop with my palm. I decided to try to get the valve back in. I took it and pressed it into the pipe as hard as I could (I was kneeling in the tub, slipping all over the place, and completely drenched at this point.)

So, take another look at that valve, I was pressing against the small silver part on the right. Its just a thin rod shaped piece that is hollow in the center to allow for the handle to be screwed into it. I was only able to get the valve about half way in. Thankfully, this was forcing much of the water through the bath faucet. My hands were becoming soft from being soaked and the narrow tip of the valve was starting to cut into the palm of my hand as I pushed against the pressure. I was making progress but whenever the pain became too great and I shifted my hand, I lost some ground on pressing the valve back in. I agonized over being stuck in this situation. I had the water under control well enough that it was now all staying in the tub and going down the drain, but I knew that no one would come looking for me for at least an hour or more.

 Eventually I was able to reach a piece of plastic and use it to shield my hand. I finally got the valve all the way in and frantically felt around for the retaining pin. I found it and after a few attempts got it back in.

The water stopped. (Except for that stupid drip)

I took a few minutes to calm down and threw some towels down on the huge puddles of water on the floor. It was a good thing that I was able to shut off about half of the hot water pressure prior to this ordeal. Otherwise, I would have been blasted with scalding hot water. (It was still hot, but didnt burn me).

I walked away with an embarrassingly stupid rookie mistake, water soaked clothes, and sixteen puncture wounds in my palm. I later asked my wife how long it would have taken her to look for me and she said she probably would have came looking for me after two hours.

 A week later, I found the proper valves to shut off the water to that apartment (You have to shut off three apartments at a time for this repair for some reason) and I got the repair made in under 5 minutes (this time without water spraying everywhere!)

So there you have it. My little horror story of plumbings past. I have two very small scars on my palm from it and one larger scar on my pride. But I can honestly say I learned from the situation and it is kind of funny now that I look back at it.

 Anyway, have any of you ever had a situation where you are just in the worst of circumstances and you are wondering if someone will ever come to your rescue? Or have you ever had a project you thought would be really quick and easy that ends up being some huge ordeal? Let us know by using the comment box below.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 1:17 am and is filed under Funny Stories, Maitenance, Mistakes, Painful, Strange Stories, Written by Enforcer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.