Plumbing for Dummies, or You Fool! You Should Have Known Better Than That!

This account will be in reverse order since I had no idea what I was getting into when I first found that my bathroom shutoff valves had been leaking for some time.

Tip 1: The plumbing industry has no clue when it comes to best practices or Lean Manufacturing. For every job there are at least 3 different ways to do things. For this reason you should familiarize yourself with these acronyms - FIP, MIP, ZIP (to search out the closest Home Depot), COMP, ID, OD, PVC, ABS - as well as such esoteric things as sweating pipe, the best tools to cut pipe of various sorts, or whether you need a dielectric union to complete your job. You should also fill up your gas tank because every job takes 3 (count 'em) trips to the hardware store. In the example of last night I was trying to attach both the water lines and the drain to my new vanity so it took 6 trips.

Tip 2: If the drain pipe coming out of the wall is less than 24" from the floor you will need and extender.

Tip 3: If your water inlets are less than 16" from the floor you will need longer supply lines that aren't right in front of your nose at the store (they are packaged differently than the shorter ones). Note that the shorter ones you see in front of your face are probably harder to install because it means the shutoff valve is directly behind the P-trap you just installed.

Tip 4: When you install the new faucet on your new vanity do it before you set the top on the vanity and make sure that the lever for the stopper is facing the back. This is probably only for those who bought a faucet where the neck swivels 360. Otherwise you'll have to take the whole thing apart again to make it so you pull rather than push the handles to turn on the water. It's no use trying to change that around while everything is in place because you'll inevitably strip the threads when trying to hook the supply line back up to the faucet. Did I mention that this connection is behind the sink and really awkward to get to?

So, are you ready to proceed?

Trip 1. I already know that my water shutoff has an angle 1/4 turn compression fitting because when I took the nut off (the one you aren't going to use anyway) it had a brass collar inside. I don't know what size it is but I'll take the nut with me and figure that out at the store. At the store you'll find this nice display where all the supply lines slide onto collars. They are supposedly in order so you can grab 2 from the same place. First the shutoff side of things. I discovered that my nut matches a hose marked 3/8". I grabbed a couple 20" hoses that had plastic fittings at the top so they could be tightened by hand. The next step was the P-trap. I told the 'pro' that I have 1 1/2" ABS coming out of the wall and a standard 1 1/4" drain on the vanity. He told me I needed a 1 1/4" P-trap and an adapter from Aisle 7 at the wall end. I took my P-trap to Aisle 7 where the other 'pro' told me to follow him back to Aisle 5 where he showed me that the 1 1/2" P-trap comes with an extra washer to make the reduction to 1 1/4". Cool!

Trip 2. Now why would they make the inlet for a toilet tank a different size than one for a faucet? The pipe coming out of the wall is the same size so what's the point. So now I grab 2 hoses meant for a faucet but 'pro' #1 tries to tell me that faucets come in either 1/2" or 3/8" so I go to Aisle 4 to confirm what I already know - all new faucets are 1/2". Unfortunately the new hoses don't have the nice plastic ends to tighten them up so it was a pain trying to get my crescent wrench in there to tighten them up. Now I'm ready to set the vanity top in place.

Trip 3. Yup, my shutoff comes out of the wall too low for a 20" hose. Since I'm pissed off at 'pro' #1 at Home Depot I head even further to Lowes for these parts. I add the other 2 hoses to my growing pile of items to be returned from this project.

Trip 4. Now it's time to tackle the drain. I see that the P-trap kit doesn't come with a nut and washer to connect it up to the ABS pipe coming out of the wall. I've swallowed my pride in favor of a shorter trip to Home Depot.

Trip 5. Since the pipe coming from the wall is too low I need an extension to reach from the sink to the P-trap. Now that everything is hooked up I turn on the water supply and see that there are no leaks. Yeah! Turn on the faucet. Oh crap! I installed it backwards so I try to swap it without taking everything apart. One supply line goes on the faucet well but the other one is cross-threaded so everything has to come apart.

I hate plumbing!

Trip 6. A short trip to the liquor cabinet.

Remember when

As I mentioned before the first house was something of a frontier house with the hand pump in the kitchen serving as a reminder of times past. The stove in the kitchen was of the wood burning variety but that's about the only thing I remember of the inside, perhaps because I was always outside. Out the kitchen door was a porch looking out on the livestock yard with the creek beyond. Jackie and I were forbidden from venturing near the creek, in part because our bull haunted the area. The driveway out to the road was also off limits to a 4 year old with the urge to explore. But both of these areas figure prominently into my few early recollections. It seems the times you live on the edge stay in your memory banks forever.

We had a dog named Shep. The family didn't have much imagination as this had been the name of at least 1 dog in my dad's youth. The pictures we have suggest that this version of Shep was something of a cross between a Collie and a German Shepherd. He and I were inseparable. Wherever he went, I went. And, this is where the problem lies. For Shep cared not for the rules imposed upon a 4 year old human. One day Dad hopped on the tractor to do some work in the cornfield across the creek that ended up at the neighbor's property on the south end. To get there he had to take the road. So, Shep followed Dad and I followed Shep. I don't think I ever caught up with Dad but Shep and I were exploring new territory. Since this is my only recollection of having a neighbor we might have explored the area before deciding to take a shortcut home. The pasture - with the bull- and the creek stood in the way of lunch. And it seems I was late. Fortunately the bull showed little interest in Shep and I. Perhaps the reason I remember this incident is the impression I made upon my parents when I came busting into the kitchen with Dad already cleaned up and ready for lunch. How had he beaten me back when I had taken the shortcut? Yup. I was in trouble.

The next piece of the story involves Jackie. She was a toddler and I had been elevated to being in charge of her while she was outside. Presumably Mom was inside tending the fire to get lunch ready. It was springtime after the snow melt, which makes her about 1 1/2 and me about 4 1/2, and she wandered into the livestock yard where the deep muck sucked the rubber boots off her feet. One boot managed to find it's way back to the house but the other one condemned me for my inattention to her safety. I was always getting in trouble and Jackie seemed to get off scott free. Another time she was caught crawling through the chicken door into the chicken coop where she was breaking eggs. Who do you think got in trouble?

The last story about the homestead was one Mom told me and I didn't remember, perhaps because I didn't get in real trouble for it. She related that I had a brand new pair of shoes and I came back to the house with only 1 shoe. So we went exploring the farm tracking all the places I had been since I left the house. When we came to the corn crib I finally remembered, or was able to get across to her in my limited vocabulary, where the shoe had come off. Who needs shoes when nature is right outside the kitchen door?

Here's a couple pictures I took in 2016 when I went back to explore my roots. The slight mound in the first is where the house stood and the dreaded creek bisects the property in the second.

RIP 61 years ago today

Last night I posted this photo on Facebook of Dad on his motorcycle. The discussion that ensued reminded fellow family members of that ugly day 61 years ago when we lost him. But from tragedy a flower sometimes blooms. Through the magic of DNA testing I now have a half sister who I am really looking forward to meeting.

Edson genealogy rewritten

After WWII a distant Edson relative had time on his hands so he decided to do a complete Edson genealogy. I'm talking 2 volumes, each one 2 inches thick. That tome showed that we all date back to an emigrant to Massachusetts in 1638. Massachusetts is a small place so it was probably inevitable that somewhere along the line we would marry someone with roots on the Mayflower. His name was James Chilton, an indentured servant.

My grandparents saw the value in this history despite their frugal ways remember, this is the family that lived without indoor plumbing until after the Great War. But my grandfather was absolutely livid when he saw that page with his name on it. For, that distant relative had committed an unforgivable blunder by stating that my grandmother was married to his brother. Not just any brother, for he had several. This brother had once been his farming partner but some unknown transgression had turned brotherly love into a lifetime of resentment. So my grandfather did the only thing he could, he ripped that page out of the book and tossed it in the fire. It wasn't until 1991 that any of my extended family even knew the name of the other brother. That's the year of the family reunion to beat all.

In the beginning

The Edson clan goes back a ways, but more on that later. I think one reason my interested in genealogy is because my dad died in a car accident when I was 5 and my mom's attempts to bury the pain caused many early memories to be be lost. It's like trying to remember geometry years after you last used it. If you don't reinforce memories they will die. As a result, I only have a few memories from that time in my life.

My absolute 1st memory in taking a bath. During my last visit to southwest Minnesota I found that this exact memory was what my dad had. How can I know this if I was 5 when he died? Well see, I lived the first 3 years of my life in the same house he spent his early years. The bath I remembered took place in the kitchen sink. But this sink was different from the one you picture when you read that last sentence. For on the right side of this sink was a hand pump. And the hot water I was sitting in had to go through the additional step of being heated on the wood stove. That hand pump looks surprisingly like this pump still available at Home Depot: