“I was expecting a thousand smackaroos!”

Last Tuesday (November 24, 2009) we had a plumber come, Miller Plumbing in Rush.
He arrived while I was still at Boughton Park walking my dog.
“That’s Habecker (“HAH-becker”) across the street,” he said to my wife. “I’ve worked for them.”
“Well they’re both dead,” my wife said. “Their son Billy lives there now.”
“Yeah, I did some work for him,” the plumber said. “I’ve also worked at that house next door. Their septic is marginal.”
“Well ours works just fine,” my wife said.
We had a slew of tiny projects, all of which I could have pursued myself. But if I had, they might not get tended to for years.
Primary were three sink traps, all of which were leaking.
They were in two bathrooms and the garage, a utility sink.
All were original to the house — about 20 years old.
All had to be replaced. All were corroded, and had broken fittings.
Next was our master bathroom toilet, which plugged occasionally.
He determined it wasn’t flushing much, so treated the jets with acid.
He also rebuilt the filling mechanism, and installed a new check-valve.
Next was the master bathroom shower-stall, which didn’t move much water.
A second restrictor was removed from the showerhead — I had removed the first, and wasn’t aware of the second.
“I see you have a tankless water-heater,” he crowed. “I bet that’s the problem.”
A tankless water-heater is just that. It heats the water as it flows through it, not water in a storage tank.
“I wouldn’t install one a’ them things if my life depended on it!” he bellowed.
“Whoa-whoa-whoa,” I thought to myself. “That thing beats the livin’ daylights outta me with scalding hot water in the other shower.”
“Are you listening?” my wife said under her breath. “That master bathroom shower had that problem before that tankless was installed.”
My guess is the master bathroom shower flows better because that restrictor was removed.
Finally was an adapter for our central vacuum unit in the basement.
It’s a plumbing job; removal of the old fitting, and gluing the adapter into the system’s PVC pipe.
“Ya gotta do it right,” he said. “About 20 seconds after ya glue the thing, the glue sets up.”
“That adapter is an admission by the manufacturer they designed the unit wrong,” my wife said.
The way it was, ya just slipped the bag inside the unit. Replacing the bag meant dust everywhere. (My wife abhors dust; although I too thought it silly.)
Same thing with bagless vacuum cleaners. 89 bazilyun HEPA filters to keep dust from escaping the vacuum cleaner, yet empty the sucker and ya got dust everywhere.
Projects completed, it was tally up time.
“Check or Visa? I can do both. $472.63.”
“Holy mackerel,” I cried. “I was expecting a thousand smackaroos!”
“I can always add more,” he said.

• “Boughton (‘BOW-tin’ as in ‘wow’) Park” is the town park nearby where I run and we walk our dog.
• Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s four, and is our sixth Irish-Setter. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. a puppy-mill. By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up.)
• My wife of almost 42 years is “Linda.”
• “HEPA” (“high efficiency particulate air”) filters remove at least 99.97 percent of airborne particles 0.3 micrometers in diameter.