I was working under the most recent project this past week, which is one of my least favorite places in the world to work. Not the new project in particular, but under the house in general. I've already talked about this before, but the dislike of it seems fresh and new each time I have to do it.

I can still crawl around with adequate agility, but there's just something creepy about the bottom side of any house. To start with, there are usually lots of spiders and bugs under there, along with the accompanying webs and such. There also are sometimes snakes, evidenced by the occasional snake skin here and there.

Damp earth, musty smells and tight quarters don't help, and neither does itchy insulation, darkness and a menagerie of other household visitors. Those guests under the house are of the worst sort—uninvited. I've never been afraid of any bug or animal, per se. However, if I come face-to-face with anything in a space where I can barely move, it's a frightening encounter. I'd say the advantage goes to the animal with full mobility over the terrified human trying to back out a hole in the dark form a prone position.

Luckily, this house has an advantage that makes the underside work a little better. I had the siding taken down around the outside edge and I am preparing for a cinderblock perimeter. So, in the meantime, the crawlspace of the house is fairly open and airish, with fairly good light in the daytime.

I was under the house because of its broken plumbing. The water there had been dripping constantly for several months, a slow and steady drizzle that soaked earth and insulation. I decided to just start over with an entirely new system rather than try to find the leaks and patch the old stuff. Besides, I really couldn't bring myself to wallow in that mud. I finally finished the other evening, getting the last few pieces installed just as the sun went down. As I was testing the rest of the plumbing, I did find a few trouble spots. One of the worst was the shower in the master bath, which apparently had a leaky drain for some time.

Luckily I had crawled under the house for another purpose and noticed the water dripping. For some reason, whenever I start to crawl under something I usually end up muddy, itchy and generally unhappy. When you add in the mystery particles that always seem to fall into my eyes when I work over my head.

Since I was running everything new, I was able to place the pipes in areas convenient to me, with only a few connections in places that were hard to reach. One of those was for the guest bathroom sink, which had its plumbing coming out right on top of the central heating duct. Thankfully the pipes I am using are very flexible. Sadly, I am not. I ended up laying on a pile of dirty insulation on top of a septic line in quite a contorted position to reach a few of the unions, but the end result wasn't anything a few ibuprofen couldn't handle. As I attached the last piece, I turned on my dual shutoff valves to that end of the house and went inside to look for leaks. After going in, I noticed that there was a water sound. The mystery was soon solved when I looked under the sink and was sprayed in the face with a high pressure stream of water. At least it was the hot water side, I thought as I tightened down the shutoff valve. I hadn't installed the supply lines to the sink because ‘someone' accidentally picked up ones with the wrong ends on them. I wonder who's to blame for that?

I also had a hard time getting the diswasher connected, but managed to take care of that problem.

When plumbing, no matter what fittings I have or how many I accumulate, I always need something I don't have.

When one is working in town during the day, that's not too much of a problem. But working out of town, on weekends or late in the evening, it's a real hassle. Guess when I work most of the time? So I always end up trying to improvise with whatever I have. I have a five-gallon bucket filled with fittings and parts, in which I store everything from threaded brass ends and sleeves to toilet fill assemblies, faucets and thread tape. Being a visual person, I usually dump everything out on the floor to start with and then assemble one part at a time.

By the time I figure out what goes with what, I could have driven to the store and bought the right part. But I learned that from my father, who always had an assortment of junk.

Sometimes my mother would get in a throwing-away mood and start asking him, "What's this for?" Sometimes he would say, "I don't rightly know what it's for, but I need it." And sometimes he did. The entire time I was growing up, I don't ever remember buying a nut or a bolt. We just dug one out of a bucket somewhere, oiled it and brushed the rust off.

My mother, on the other hand, would always try to throw everything away as soon as she could get the chance. They counteracted each other's extreme tendencies and ended up a happy medium. I think I got the squirreling away gene, but these days, it pays to save wherever you can. In other words, if you look too closely at the prices, you might not want to buy so many parts. For instance, a one-half-inch brass cap for a threaded pipe was nearly $5. Sticker shock! When you need one of those and that's the only alternative, you'll buy it no matter the cost. And that's why people like me dig through a bucket of junk.
 

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