Oh the plumbing stories! It's gotten to the point that I carry enough plumbing supplies and fittings that the plumbers check with me before runninig out to the supply house for that one piece that they are short, and often I have what they need.
One of my worst experiences was about three or four years ago when I had my son cutting open the floor to gain access to drill the joists below. We were told in advance that there was a bit of radiant hot water heat in the floor and met with the homeowner to show us the areas to avoid.
I set a circular saw to just under 7/8" to cut through the 3/4" plywood sub floor and sent my son off to do his work. Shortly he was back asking me if there was supposed to be water squirting out of the cut that he just made.
What we found was the some ingenious plumber designed his own system using 3/4" copper set into notches in the tops of the joists (in an area forgotten about by the homeowner). If that wasn't enough, the plumber inserted shims where ever needed to insure that all of the tubing was in direct contact with the underside of the sub floor.
The boiler in this "mini mansion" was the size of a small truck with a 1" makeup water supply could that pump a lot of water back into the system in a short period of time.
Once the water was finally shut off, we had to wait for the three stories of those huge cast iron radiators to drain to beneath the first floor.
Of course I had the necessary fittings, torch etc to repair the copper. Then to add icing to the cake it was November in the north east and I didn't have a radiator key with me. Helpful Homer at the local Home Depot was not very helpful that day, he just didn't get the concept of needing a key for a radiator it's not like you need to lock them up or anything.
We lost about an hour draining the system, a couple of minutes repairing the problem, about an hour refilling the system, about an hour and a half chasing down a key and finally about an hour bleeding the system and getting heat back into the house.
It was just another monday.
This is a pretty good thread, I may have to post again with the cat story from about thirty years ago with my dad.
FRANK
