TimArcher.com A blog about technology...and more.

I apologize for the lack of posts, but this past week has been a week of hell dealing with plumbing...

First off, I found out that my shower had a leak last Monday. I decided to replace the fixture, but it was some goofy fixture that was actually all attached inside of the walls and the job required the walls to be opened up. I decided to not do that one myself and hired a plumber. I called 5 different plumbers, and only 1 decided to call me back and bid on the job. They were able to get it done, as well as extract $670 from my wallet.

Now, today (Sunday), I found out my garbage disposal has been leaking. A bunch of water has started ruining the finish of the base of the cabinet under the sink. Oh yeah, and my favorite part was the nasty smell and slimy fungus growing under the sink from the water that has been dripping for who knows how long.

In any case, I tried to fix it 3 times today, but it keeps leaking. The drain just won't seal properly with the sink and it keeps leaking. I used a bunch of plumbers putty, put on new rubber gaskets, etc. On the third try of re-setting everything, I thought I had it fixed and so I decided to test it out. I filled the sink and ran the disposal to make sure the shaking didn't cause any leaks. At that point the entire disposal spun off the fixture and all the water poured out of the sink onto my nice hardwood floors. Grrrrr......

After a 20 minute cooling off period, I decided to try it all again. This time I tried to use less plumbers putty, and to not tighten the heck out of the thing. I filled it with water, and guess what? It’s still leaking!! The plumbers putty alone is just not plugging the gaps good enough. The vibration of the disposal is enough to loosen things up enough to allow a drip of water to come through.

As a last resort I decided to put a bead of silicone around the entire drain. I have to let it dry for about 24 hours before exposing it to water. I’ll keep you all posted in the morning on whether that actually fixes it...

Too bad I can't just pull out my computer, and write a new method:

public void stopLeaking (PlumbingObject leakyThing)

Update 6/25/07
The silicone around the drain has dried, I filled the sink with water, and there doesn't seem to be any leaks! It passed the beta test, now lets see how it stands up to production usage over the next few days...