An unplanned plumbing repair finished tonight - the supply line to the outside faucet. We still had the original faucet on the side of the house, and actually bought a modern anti-siphon non-freezing silcock for it a good two years ago, so this has been on the todo list for a while.
A couple of weeks ago, the morning i was about to leave for my Oregon trip, i heard water running though i was the only person awake in the house. I checked the outside faucet and it wasn’t running, but the foundation blocks there were soaked. I ran back inside and sure enough, there was water running in down the wall, and the floor was soaked in a 10′ circle. When i got back from the trip, i took the lines apart, and the threaded end of the steel pipe connected to the faucet was corroded through on two sides, completely gone where the threads had been.
It took 3 trips to Menards to get all the right parts. The first trip i bought replacement steel lines, which seemed easiest. The problem was that one of the original lines was bent to accomadate the offset connection, and i couldn’t bend the pipe the same way (and the original one was too corroded to reuse). So, back for a copper version of the same thing. It was $13 for 5′ of 3/4″ copper pipe! The third trip was for a threaded fitting i’d forgotten to get on the 2nd trip.
I had to think a bit to make sure i could still screw the one end to the supply valve and the other end to the silcock, but i figured it out eventually. I laid it out with 3 pipes and 2 elbows, 6 joints to sweat in all, with the threaded end fittings. The soldered joints were all water-tight on the first try. I had to remove the silcock because of a 12-second drip at that threaded joint, but a fresh application of thread compound fixed that.
We’re once again able to fill the swimming pool, just in time for another week in the 90s!
