When it Rains it Leaks

Not our basement, though in our basement.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been noticing water on the floor in the vicinity of our water equipment (i.e. pressure tank, conditioner, neutralizer, etc.), though I couldn’t exactly figure out where it was coming from. A day or so later everything would be dry and I’d stop thinking about it. I figured it was useless to call the plumber because he’d only replace parts until he figured out what it was.

Yesterday I went down stairs to finally hear what it was. The pipe between the pressure tank and water neutralizer was leaking.

It’s Tuesday morning 7:30 am. I have to take a shower, take out the trash (including emptying the litter box), package something up for UPS and get to work. Oh yeah. Jen’s do any minute and this has to be fixed.

I tell Jen I finally found the leak and it needs fixing. Will probably incur an emergency service surcharge.

Let’s just say she wasn’t happy.

My biggest concern was the potential mess I could have if the pipe decided to give-way. See, this is the only copper pipe we have before the conditioning equipment. For those that don’t know, the water in these parts is particularly destructive of metal parts if it’s not conditioned (i.e. neutralized and softened). It was only a matter of time before this leaked and possibly ruptured. Now it was leaking. Could it rupture too?

I called my Dad and woke him up. He said try electrical tape and a hose clamp.

I had electrical tape, but no hose clamps of that size (for some reason my stock is all 6″ and bigger) at home. Still I worried the hose clamp would just crush an already weakened pipe.

I wrapped duct tape over the electrical tape and that seemed to hold. At least hold enough to tell Jen it had stopped leaking and figure out plan B.

Plan B (which was always in the back of my mind) was to temporarily fix it with SharkBite fittings and some pipe from the local hardware store – simple, fast, cheap and effective.

Only problem with SharkBite fittings is that they’re illegal to sell in Vermont and California because those states say the plastic in the fittings causes birth defects. Granted the baby on the way is pretty far along, but we’re kind of running on bare nerves here. Things like this easily strike a chord.

Pragmatism won.

But what was really nice was the flexible line I used. The semi-permanent fix took only 15 minutes to put together.

I say semi-permanent because there’s still too much copper line before the conditioning equipment.

The proper fix is to replace it all with PVC, though not today or at least until after the baby’s born.

– b