New Taps

For awhile now I have been bothered by my tub taps leaking. At some point in the past someone attempted to remove the taps and did a horrible job. They used a wrench and just ripped the brass fittings. I tried just about everything I could think of and I couldn't get the faucets out to replace the 'O' rings, etc.

My sis-in-law suggested maybe I should just replace the whole tap assembly by going through the back wall. This got me to thinking that this may in fact be the easiest way to fix my leaking taps. The faucets are mounted on the wall that is in my computer room closet, so it would be an easy task to cut the gyproc out and unsolder the connection.

On my recent trip to the 'Big City' I stopped in at Centennial Plumbing and talked to one of the fellows in the store. He assured me that by using Sharkbite Accessories it would be an easy fix. Now these fittings are not cheap, but they certainly seemed easy to use so I purchased what I needed and headed for home.

I proceeded to clean out my closet of used hard drives, wires, etc to get to the back wall of the tub. With a gyproc saw I cut out a nice patch in the wall allowing me access to the copper plumbing. I then proceeded to cut the copper pipes out around the tap fittings and pulled the beast out of the wall.



Within 5 minutes I had slipped the 'Sharkbite' connectors onto the existing copper pipe hooked up to the 'Pex' tubing and fitted the new tap fixture back into the wall. I then tightened everything up and headed downstairs to turn on the main water line. Viola!, no leaks at all. What a simple way to connect you plumbing. The nice part is that there is no solder so there is no lead to leech into your water supplies.

I only had to replace the gyproc in the closet with a piece of painted plywood with 4 wood screws and I had an excellent patch as well as a very easy access if I ever need to get at the tap fixtures in the future.

The Sharkbites were a little more money than just using solder, but for a novice plumber working in a closed space like the wall, the connectors were definitely worth the extra money I had to pay.

The best part is that I don't stay awake at night listening to the drip, drip of the taps in the tub. You gotta luv that :)

Wonderful Weekend

Did we ever have some wonderful weather this last weekend. On Friday I had my doubts with the amount of frost we had Friday morning, but late Friday and into the weekend, the sun came out and it was just great. What made it even better was that both Sheila, Wendell & the girls and Craig decided that they would drop out for the weekend.

Seeing as Sheila and Wendell both have to work on Thanksgiving and who knows with Craig with some of the shifts that he is working, I decided that I'd cook up a small turkey. Of course the heat of the weekend didn't help, but at least I have the air conditioning so it was fine. Sheila helped out and made some pies and we had a very nice family meal on Saturday.

The grandkids also got a treat in that Tim, Kris and Presley were in town. The girls got to visit with their cousin Presley who they don't see that often. Along with the weather being so nice, Craig and James were able to get out on the golf course and from what I heard, Craig had a great game. James not so good.

Everyone headed home yesterday and like normal, the house feels like a tomb with the lack of noise. It only takes a day or so and we are back into the 'quiet' mode, so it is no big deal.

All in all, it was a great weather weekend and it was made extra special with the kids visiting...

Staying Busy

Sheesh it has been a fairly long time since I've sat behind the keyboard of late. There are actually a few reasons for this, one being the amount of travelling I've been doing (going to and from the city). The main reason for the travelling is that I've run into a sore shoulder in the rotator area. So when I was in at my annual medical I mentioned it to my doctor who decided I should see a physiotherapist. On my first appointment for the physio the guy wasn't too hard on the shoulder. He sent me home with some exercises to do to help with the rotator muscles.

Of course once you get into to see a therapist, they want you back fairly often so they can work on you and judge if you are gaining or loosing. That has meant 2 trips a week to the city for the therapy. Of course at home I'm doing the required exercises to help strengthen up the muscle and get the blood flowing in the area. The therapist feels I probably have a small tear (or more than one) in the rotator area and that I may need surgery. Still he wants to see if the physio will help prior to surgery. For the surgery you need to visit an orthopedic surgeon and they have a fairly long waiting list.

Some days the shoulder is fine and others it hurts like the daylights. Even on the fine days if I happen to stretch or reach the wrong way, the shoulder gives me quite a jolt of pain. I try and remember not to reach or stretch that way again as it hurts, but of course you forget in a day or so and you do it again.

I have another 2 appointments this week with the physio and then the therapist will decide if it warrants continued sessions or not. I do think it has helped to a certain degree, but it is a small degree in my view.

The other thing that has kept me going is working on a bunch of computers. Fall is coming and folks are wanting to get their computers tuned up for the upcoming winter months. Of course the computer needed help all summer long, but you never want to get work done before you actually need the computer. However, for the most part, I have had no problem keeping up with the demand. What is a little maddening is when I get the computer fined tuned and it is working top notch and then get it back to the customer and they do something and it crashes the whole thing again. Trying to figure out what happened and how to rectify it so that it doesn't happen again is a guessing game at times. One such computer is one that I'm working on from a person in the city. I got it all set up and it was purring. Got it back to the customer and she found a trouble spot so the next trip into the city I fixed that up. Now it seems her younger son felt the computer was locked up or something so he powered it off and now it won't restart. So tomorrow on my trip to the city, I'll be stopping by and see if it is a quick fix or a 'bring it home' job. Hopefully it is just glitch that I can fix up on site.

No one likes to be without their computers now a days...

Lots of Driving Lately

For the last week and a half I have been putting on more than normal amount of kilometers on the truck. This all started when Sam's warfarin levels decided to go wacky so we have had to make a trip into the city every couple days to get her levels checked.

Finally today we got word that the levels seem to be settled back down and we can go back to our previous routine of getting her checked once a month. I do believe the problem was some older meds (ie warfarin). When the doc was on holiday her replacement decided to drop the daily rate from 3 mg to 2.5 mg. Now it is darn difficult to cut up a 3 mg tab so I used a 1 mg tab and cut in half a 4 mg tab. After looking at the bottle closer, it could be that the 4 mg tabs were a bit old so they may not have had their full potency.

Then on the long weekend we decided to travel to Christopher and close up shop for another year. We have had a few nights where the temperatures have dropped fairly close to zero, so we decided it would be best if we drained the water lines etc at the cabin. It is a lot easier to drain the lines than trying to fix burst ones. As it had been a bit cool of late, we didn't know what we would face when we got up north so we weren't sure if we were going for the weekend or just a day or what.

Last Sunday we headed out in early in the morning and followed Craig back into the city. Sandra and I then continued on north. As we got closer to Christopher you could see where there had been a fair amount of rain of late. On arrival at the cabin the ground was still moist but of course this is forest country so it wasn't muddy or anything like that. When I opened up the door to the cabin I sure could feel the cool air rushing out. I then opened up the windows and within an hour or so it was fairly nice inside for Sam. I commenced to take down the lights, and started stowing away everything for the winter hibernation.

At noon I took a break and cooked us up some dinner. As we were sitting down eating, we were looking out the window and it sure was nice and peaceful. No wind at all and of course the leaves starting to change colour and fall to the ground. We were tempted to stay the night, but after a bit we decided that we should probably just close up shop and head south again.

After we washed up the dishes and got the fridge cleaned out, I headed outside and started on the water lines. Of course I had to empty the storage tank of water which I did with the pump. While the water was pouring out I was shaking my head on the wasted effort I had done to get the tank filled earlier in the summer. A lot of useless extra effort, but if I hadn't filled the tank we would have run short. So better to be prepared than having to play catch up.

Once the tank was empty I got the pump disconnected and serviced and commenced to blow out the lines. After that it was just a matter of cleaning up and loading the truck and we were heading southwards once again. We did have one stop in the city on our way through as I had to pick up a hard drive for a computer I was working on. I made it to Office Depot with about 5 minutes to spare before their closing, picked up the drive and we headed for the home stretch. We pulled into the garage just prior to 6 pm. Both of us had sore butts from so much sitting, but at least we had the comfort to know the cabin was ready to face another Saskatchewan winter.

Next came more driving to the city as I had to go visit a physiotherapist for my shoulder that has been bothering me of late. I had the shoulder xrayed during my annual medical and there was no sign of arthritis, so the doc wanted to see what a therapist could do for it. So into the city again we went and the therapist pulled and pushed the shoulder until it really hurt. He gave me some exercises to do for the next while and told me to come back next Tuesday and Thursday for followups. So that means two more trips to the city next week.

On our initial trip to the therapist I also took in the computer I was working on. Once I was done with my pain class I headed over and setup the computer for the customer. I had to do an install on the printer, and a final virus scan, and then I was done. This trip only took about 45 minutes or so and then we headed for home once again.

I think all told in the last week and half I put on about 2,000 kms or so. Hopefully that is not going to be my future mileage counts. Let alone getting 'TB' out of the sitting, the cost of gas is certainly not going down any.