Bookend for May 24 #2

Bookend for May 24 #2
Originally uploaded by kretyen

Saturday evening.
Most of my day was spent fixing the water softener. On Friday it was discharging water down the drain (something it should do when it recycles) all day. It was running in the morning when I went to work (strange, I thought), and was still running when I came home from work (a problem, I thought).

When I put the water softener in 3 years ago I didn't install a bypass valve system (it was supposed to come with one, but didn't). Now, after fussing with the controls to no success, I had no way to shut it off without shutting water off to the whole house.

So Saturday morning I set out to put in a series of valves that would let me bypass the water softener. The repair guy I called was very nice, but said he couldn't get to us until next Thursday. I needed to get this thing bypassed.

I went to the hardware store, bought the requisite valves and tees, cut the pipe, installed all the stuff, went to Karl's house and borrowed his torch for soldering. Then I soldered it all up.

The problem was, this was all 1" copper pipe which I have rarely soldered. I didn't heat each joint evenly. Some parts of the joints I overheated, driving the flux out. The result was that when I turned the water on, thinking everything was well-soldered, I was treated to a shower--with virtually every joint leaking.

So I called Karl and groveled. He graciously came to my rescue. It took too of us to unsolder all the joints, properly clean them, put it all together, and then let Karl do the honors of applying the proper heat for a professional job.

Thanks, Karl!

So after this I made a fire in the chiminea and we enjoyed watching the mountains change color. Very relaxing.