It's the Little Things

Meet Tony of Bishop Plumbing, who arrived here around 8:30 this morning and just left. I had to sign a contract with him just to diagnose my problem; Bishop Plumbing's diagnosis fee is $214.75, which doesn't include the cost of fixing whatever problem is diagnosed. Tony waived the $69.95 dispatch fee (lucky me). To diagnose the problem he had to turn off the basement water valves to all three apts. in the building. It seems that a couple of these valves were installed when the building was built, in 1917, and before he would touch them he went into great detail about possible dire side effects of working with them. Sound familiar? Fortunately, none of these dire side effects occurred. I find this hopeful. Tony then removed my faucet, diagnosed the problem as defective O rings in the cartridge. The O-rings in the cartridge are smaller than my finger nail. There are 5 of them, of which one was missing, one was half gone, and I dont remember the rest. Tony's plumber's kit includes 60 different sizes and shapes of O-rings, none of which fit my cartridge properly. Tony observed that replacement O-rings seldom fit cartridges like mine, which are designed so that the entire cartridge has to be replaced, at great expense. He gerry-rigged some replacement O-rings, turned the water back on, and the stream from the faucet is now slightly heavier than it was after Bob left last night. Tony has to order a new cartridge, which will not arrive until Christmas eve at the earliest, possibly not until after Christmas. My cat is delighted. I am not so delighted, but what can you do. The total bill for this little adventure in home maintenance will come to somewhere around $660 (plus whatever it costs for a new wall plate; Tony's parts book didn't feature the wall plate, so he will have to look it up when he gets back to the office). Tony noticed all sorts of other problems with the plumbing in the basement (besides the ancient shut-off valves, which he says if we don't replace them now there will come a time when we'll need to shut off the water and won't be able to). Tony will write up a modest proposal for fixing those.

I will now take a deep breath and turn my attention to making soup for Christmas eve. My friend Nancy Gardner is coming over shortly to help get this party together, and tomorrow morning our "share the care" steering committee meets. Onward.