If someone wanted to squeeze valuable information out of me (assuming I had any), they wouldn’t need to shove me inside a torture chamber and twiddle with me. All they would need to do is hand me a pipe wrench and force me to either do some plumbing or spill the beans. I would spill everything I knew—and then some—to avoid plumbing. And the only thing I like less than plumbing is plumbing with galvanized steel piping, especially for water.
Here’s the thing: at some point,
galvanized pipe will deteriorate (in the form of rust) and then leak.
When I constructed my house
thirty-three years ago, I did my best to use copper, brass, and plastic
fittings throughout the plumbing system. Unfortunately, I ended up with
galvanized fittings in two locations. The first location was the main shutoff
valve, where the water emerges in my crawlspace. That section sprung a leak and
flooded my crawlspace in November 2020.
Yesterday, when I pulled out my
space-age-looking cluster of reverse osmosis water filters to change them, I
discovered a leak in the ½-inch galvanized cap used where my filtration system
is tied in.
Here’s the thing: it’s plumbing. It’s
in a bad spot to reach. And I know a guy—who is not me—who can fix it. Below, I
am sharing pictures of my plumbing issues.
—Mitchell Hegman
When I was a plumber we used to call it gas pipe. Almost every home then had gas stoves and heaters, although all water came from the street via this gas piping. Terrible stuff. Not only did it leak, but it corroded on the inside of the pipe and would be in your drinking water.
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