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Plumbing mysteries
Apr. 25th, 2016 09:20 pmMany plumbing realities don't make sense to me.
Shower dangers
You know that thing where you're taking a shower and someone turns on a sink or flushes a toilet somewhere else in the house or perhaps the hotel room next door suddenly your shower is too hot? I think I get that. Some of the cold water in your carefully calibrated water flow has been diverted, so ouch.
What I don't get is why this never happens in my house. It's awesome. Apparently I have a remarkable feature known as good water pressure. I do not live at the bottom of a hill or anything. I don't know how I got this, but I love it.
Dinosaurs
Sometimes we used to get weird noises for which the technical term may be "dinosaurs in the pipes." Apparently when air gets trapped, these noises happen and you have to flush the system. Or something. I really don't get it. Are the pipes always sitting around full of water? I guess so. Except not drain pipes.
Dissipating hot water
Before starting my shower, I turn on the hot water in the bathtub. It comes out cold, which I understand--the water in the pipe between the water heater and the tub has cooled down. So I have to wait for the water from the water heater to push that out of the way until the freshly heated water arrives.
While I'm waiting, I'll sometimes do something else like brush my hair out, and so I don't just blast it but keep it on low. Slowly, the water turns itself into a trickle, and then maybe even completely off. I don't get that. I have not drained the water heater; the water is still cold even.
Increasing water volume
Shortly after we got our new water heater, we also got a new kitchen faucet.
I had a style that Robin refers to as "trailer house" and we haven't been able to find a good replacement until recently. We found an adequate replacement at the Habitat Re-Store a while back, but eventually decided to use only the hot water side because the cold water side was too hard to turn off.
But it got to where we couldn't turn the cold water off at all, so Robin looked again and found a replacement in a style he refers to as "restaurant." The store selling it calls it a wall-mounted swivel faucet. You can see a picture at Webstaurant Store.
This worked out great, but sometimes when we turn the hot water on, it turns itself on more and more. I can watch the lever moving. Sometimes it can go from a tiny trickle to blasting (and maybe more, but I'm afraid to wait any longer). It's hard to rinse your dishes when you can use only one hand so you can control the water flow with the other hand. This happens only sometimes, and only with the hot water.
Robin theorizes that the water pressure is so great that it can turn our now smoothly moving faucet handle. Maybe as it gets older and stickier, this problem will go away.
Shower dangers
You know that thing where you're taking a shower and someone turns on a sink or flushes a toilet somewhere else in the house or perhaps the hotel room next door suddenly your shower is too hot? I think I get that. Some of the cold water in your carefully calibrated water flow has been diverted, so ouch.
What I don't get is why this never happens in my house. It's awesome. Apparently I have a remarkable feature known as good water pressure. I do not live at the bottom of a hill or anything. I don't know how I got this, but I love it.
Dinosaurs
Sometimes we used to get weird noises for which the technical term may be "dinosaurs in the pipes." Apparently when air gets trapped, these noises happen and you have to flush the system. Or something. I really don't get it. Are the pipes always sitting around full of water? I guess so. Except not drain pipes.
Dissipating hot water
Before starting my shower, I turn on the hot water in the bathtub. It comes out cold, which I understand--the water in the pipe between the water heater and the tub has cooled down. So I have to wait for the water from the water heater to push that out of the way until the freshly heated water arrives.
While I'm waiting, I'll sometimes do something else like brush my hair out, and so I don't just blast it but keep it on low. Slowly, the water turns itself into a trickle, and then maybe even completely off. I don't get that. I have not drained the water heater; the water is still cold even.
Increasing water volume
Shortly after we got our new water heater, we also got a new kitchen faucet.
I had a style that Robin refers to as "trailer house" and we haven't been able to find a good replacement until recently. We found an adequate replacement at the Habitat Re-Store a while back, but eventually decided to use only the hot water side because the cold water side was too hard to turn off.
But it got to where we couldn't turn the cold water off at all, so Robin looked again and found a replacement in a style he refers to as "restaurant." The store selling it calls it a wall-mounted swivel faucet. You can see a picture at Webstaurant Store.
This worked out great, but sometimes when we turn the hot water on, it turns itself on more and more. I can watch the lever moving. Sometimes it can go from a tiny trickle to blasting (and maybe more, but I'm afraid to wait any longer). It's hard to rinse your dishes when you can use only one hand so you can control the water flow with the other hand. This happens only sometimes, and only with the hot water.
Robin theorizes that the water pressure is so great that it can turn our now smoothly moving faucet handle. Maybe as it gets older and stickier, this problem will go away.