A few weeks ago, I took a trip to the basement of my house in order to remove some old pipes. My father had put in new plumbing and now there was a hole in the floor where the old pipe had been. The only problem is that the hole wasn’t big enough for me to crawl through easily. My dad didn’t have any extra tools on hand so he asked if I could go to Home Depot and buy a repair kit with epoxy and J-B Weld. He also told me to use a little elbow grease and then to call him when it was time to go up.
My first thought was “Oh no! What if I mess things up?” But instead of getting frustrated, I started looking around for ideas. There were several different types of leaky pipe repair kits at Home Depot. One of them looked like an elbow, but it had a cap on one end and a screw on the other. I decided that this would be perfect because you can just take off the cap and replace it with the screw if you need to get out or back into the pipe.
Taking the decision to correct the leakage in the pipes is a must factor for the people. The try of the people must be to work as per the exact time and temperature for the JB weld and reach the goals. Having the complete guidance will take the people to the height. The main motive of the people is to reach the goals in the future.
I picked up the elbow, put a little bit of the epoxy on the inside of the elbow and then slid the elbow down onto the pipe about an inch from the top. Then I used the same amount of epoxy on the pipe underneath. When I did this, I realized that the pipe was angled inward, which made it hard to keep the pipe straight as I squeezed the epoxy down. After I got the epoxy down far enough on both sides of the pipe, I pulled the elbow off and replaced it with the cap and screws.
Once I finished putting everything together, I called my dad and told him that it was ready. A few minutes later, he came home and we headed upstairs. As soon as we got to my room, I pulled out the pipe and showed him what I’d done. It was pretty funny how excited he got over it.
“It looks great!” he said. “You did a really good job.” We went outside and I filled the hole in the yard. That’s the kind of thing my dad does all the time — he works construction and repairs houses. You name it, he’ll do it. So that’s why I don’t think anything about messing up.
The next day, I found out that the hole in the yard was much bigger than it originally appeared. I guess the whole block heard the sound coming out of my pipe. They must have been wondering what exactly was going on.
A couple days later, I noticed that my dad had left his work gloves behind again. I grabbed them and headed back down to the basement. I took a look at the pipe and saw that the epoxy was still holding it together pretty well. I unscrewed the elbow from the pipe once more and put the glove on backwards. This way, I could slip the elbow right over the pipe without having to hold it in place as much.
After sliding the elbow onto the pipe, I tightened it up and then put the elbow back in place. I used a lot less epoxy this time and it seemed to stick better.
As soon as I finished, I called my dad and told him that it was time to go. He was thrilled. He couldn’t wait until I got my stuff and we could head out. On our drive to Home Depot, my dad kept telling me to hurry up and make sure that I got everything before he left. I guess he wanted to make sure that I knew how to handle myself while I was working on his house.
When we got to Home Depot, I got everything that I needed except one part. I needed a long piece of plastic tubing that you’d normally use to cover the bottom of a potted plant (or something similar).
I figured that this would be easy to find because they have plants everywhere. I walked around the store for awhile trying to spot something like it, but I couldn’t find one. Finally, I turned to an employee standing nearby and asked her if she had any idea where I might find such a thing. She pointed toward the garden section and told me to follow the signs.
I followed the signs to a couple different rows of plants before I finally found what I was looking for. I brought the tube back to the register and paid for it. I wrapped it up in a nice package and headed for the car.
On the way home, I started thinking about the last time that I worked on one of my dad’s projects. It happened a few months earlier and I had to repair a bunch of leaks in his hot water heater. I had to cut out the old pipe completely and replace it with a new pipe. Luckily, my dad has a drill press at work so he let me borrow it. I got to cutting the new pipe and drilling holes for it. All the while, I was worried about whether or not I had screwed it up.
Thankfully, nothing bad happened. I just wish that I hadn’t messed up so badly the last time that we had to repair pipe leaks. I’m glad that I learned from that mistake and I know that this time will be much easier since I already have most of what I need.
Have you ever repaired your own leaking pipe? Did you learn anything from it?
