Look out for old/weak hose bibs! "Funny" story

Residential
1

So the day begins great, I’m feeling good and ready for this job. Full day Head of me. I got a roof/house/driveway wash all in 1 house.

I roll up at 8:45, grab my supply hose and start trudging to the spigot.

Hmm what is this adapter thing? My hose won’t fit on it so I must remove it! (Instead of finding another bib like I should have) it won’t budge by hand, so I grab my channel locks and get to cranking, on this worthless, rusted, and piece of… oh crap!

Pipe cracks… water is spewing up 10ft…

First thought: find the main and shut it down so I can see what I’m looking at.

Ok I find the main, good! Start closing the valve… closing the valve… damn this is a fine threaded valve… keep spinning it…
Oh my… the main valve is also rusted out and no longer even attached to handle. Just free spins.

Well what the *$#@!

Ok gotta tell the home owner what’s happening.
They come out tell me to shut the main, I tell them you have no more main valve…

End up having to have the city come out and shut the water off from the meter… and a plumber come out to fix the pipe I broke and the main valve because, yeah you need that fixed sir.

Then it started to rain… hard… and lightening…

Called it a day, compensated the customer for the pipe repair ($230), and was home by 11:00.

Thankfully it was a cool and understanding customer, and we re scheduled the job for next week.

So basicly my day was “roll up to job, break some crap, lose some money, go home”

Lol just goes to show, expect anything and everything to fail.

The pipe was very corroded and would have broke on pretty much the next guy to use it but I did use “un necessary” force.

Oh well, new day tomorrow!

6 Likes
2

I remember doing a similar thing when I was an apprentice, dad kicked my ■■■…
Lessons learned- dont mess with customers plumbing- ever.

3

It’s the same with windows, don’t force them. I keep violating my own rule however.:laughing:

1 Like
4

Dang, that sucks.

I had a no-go day yesterday, too. Went to do a $1300 commercial job that I priced via google earth & street view, since it was nearly an hour away.

Get there to find out there’s no water access, whatsoever. No response from the town’s DPW about renting a hydrant meter. No go from the neighboring businesses on using their water. Not even a slop sink to hook up to inside.

One of the buildings had a hose bib that had been disconnected (a section of the pipe was literally missing). So the property manager had no idea there wasn’t any water there.

5

Dude your a good story teller. Laughed my butt off. Thanks for the story

1 Like
6

well at least I can get some laughs from it. lol always something different happening when you run everything.

1 Like