On Christmas eve at 1806 (6:06 pm) the wife said there was water flowing in the gutters out front. Exuding confidence and a no-big-deal attitude, the dutiful husband limped into action secretly fearing the several previous nights of freezing weather had finally stabbed through the insulation on our pipes. Sure enough, the anti-siphon valve on the pool filler was blasting water up the side of the house.
After shutting off the water main and inspecting the pipe, I saw the geyser was not due to the freeze, at least not directly. The pool builders, sketchy fellows they are, had glued several pvc fittings in Frankenstein fashion to “reach” the main pipe and then covered it with pipe foam and tape. This weak spot was doomed to fail sometime and it did, on Christmas Eve… in the dark and the cold.
Courses of Action: call a professional and pay through the nose, go without water until the next day and hope to fix it (on Christmas Day), OR fix it immediately. Option #2 would ensure me a “Silent Night” from the wife.
Fixing most household problems is easy. The hard part is the “part.” One must drive somewhere to find the part. Will they have the part? If not, who? What do I do if I cannot find the part? It can take hours. Maybe I have the part?
Of course I had the part: A 3/4’’ male end plug.
I remembered I had a sack of PVC pipe fittings from an aborted garden project. A man has to have some crap around. And a man has to remember what crap he has in the crap collection.
Ten minutes later I had water back in the house and I scored some husband points (in extra innings).
Now, I don’t mean to condescend, but it seems my neighbors in this subdivision are a tad under-prepared and unskilled in basic household survival. Days before the cold weather hit us and the nation, the local Facebook group blew up with questions: How do I protect my pipes? What do I do if they freeze? How do I operate the chimney flue? The electricity is out in my kitchen, why is that?
In my teens, Frederick Ruxton’s famous books about the Mountain Men were my guides to manly preparedness. There are better books on “preparation”, of course, but Ruxton is all I had or cared to read. I started to think what ought to be in the household “possibles bag” a long time ago.
By “preparation,” I don’t mean emergency preparation like food storage and crates of ammo and wooden stakes for killing vampires during the daytime, when they sleep. (I am READY for those sumbitches, by the way.) Watch how Heston dealt with them below.
To be prepared is to understand what is likely to fail, not what is catastrophic but unlikely. It is hard to die, but very easy to be miserable. Mountain Men knew this. Those fringes on their buckskins were there for shedding rain and wick-drying moisture. Form follows function. Their famous “possibles” bag was not a survival kit per se, but a bag for those things needed daily or most likely to be needed. Bullets, black powder, patches, worms (screws to get out a patch or bullet), screw drivers, needles and thread, et cetera. Chances are YOU need a household possibles bag. That is, a bag for possibilities.
Rules for a household possibles bag. Better yet, use a box:
KNOW how to turn off your gas, water and electricity and who to call if you are not home. Teach everyone in the house how to shut it all off. Show your neighbor as well; they probably don’t know how to do it themselves.
Things you push, pull, tug or turn are likely to fail. Have a replacement on hand or know how you might fix it. Think about this now, before it happens. KEEP on hand: pipe clamps, tap and die kit, small vice-grips, JB weld and magnets to keep little screws from rolling around. My wife was stuck in a bathroom once when the door knob came off in her hand, which was really funny for the first hour.
All water outlets are evil: have a plan to fix or replace the broken Chinese crap with new Chinese crap. A high-dollar brass spigot blew its top this summer and geysered water for hours before we caught it. Why? Cross-threaded by the manufacturer. The kitchen faucet (Moen) handle came off a week later. The tiny friction screw had loosened. KEEP on hand: a new spigot or two, good pipe wrenches of various sizes, a set of Channellocks, teflon tape and some Allen wrenches.
Your freezer was likely built by disgruntled Uyghurs who were force-binged hours of shrill re-education cartoons each day before work. Your freezer WILL fail you at some point. DO NOT ever plug a refrigerator or freezer into a circuit protected by a ground-fault interrupter (GFI; see #6 below). KEEP a big ice chest, it will give you time to pick up another Chinese freezer.
Sinks will clog. Wives will poke potato peels and terrycloth towels into disposals. Children will drop your wedding ring down the drain. Fate. KNOW how to disassemble traps and pipes and garbage disposals. Nowadays, the pipes are often PVC: cheap and light and relatively dummy proof. You can hand-tighten most of the fittings. KEEP on hand: a spare trap kit with extra O-rings and seals, teflon tape, plumbers putty and a clamp-on light (it is dark under there).
GFI outlets are made by Uyghurs that get fired from the freezer factory. GFI outlets can weaken over time (or just quit) so even a statically charged house cat can trip one in passing. Most kitchens and bathrooms are now covered by two or three of them and, if they are weak, no smoothies for you. KEEP on hand: a new GFI outlet. If you are an outlaw, a normal outlet can be used. But I am not advocating that because someone will do it, somehow shock themselves into a drooling idiot and sue me.
Hot water heaters were well constructed once, later tortured and mutilated by the Dark Powers to become cheap, explosive and unreliable. Do you have hard water? Do you have a water softener? If you answered YES and NO, then you are going to have an exploding or leaky mess someday. My heaters are in the attic, and therefore I maintain a water softener so they don’t explode over our bedroom. If your water heater makes a hellish rumble while heating, you likely have a lot of calcium scale inside. Ensure the cold water inlet pipe has a shut-off valve; turn it off when you travel. If not, install one. You’ll figure it out. KEEP on hand: a prayer, because only the Lord knows when one of these damned things will pop.
Something nasty will eventually be spilled, flooded, vomited or excreted on your carpet. Even if you clean it immediately to perfection, the carpet and padding must be dried fast. KEEP on hand: floor fans. Get good ones. Use them to cool off in the summer or next to a gassy dog, which is how we use ours.
I pray you all have a happy, leakless, clogless and unstinky New Year.
And quit looking at my gut, I’m working on it!
Jan Hooks, rest in peace.
Clearly, all really important pieces of advice. I should have most of these mastered by the time I'm 85, if I'm lucky. I despair for the younger generations. . . (who have no idea why the electricity in the kitchen turned off or how to fix it, among other things).