Doh! Moment...

[nolarefugee]

I was mowing the yard yesterday on the old ('77) wheel horse and while navigating close to a fence, I bumped into a hosebibb that comes straight out of the ground in 1/2" galv pipe. Mowing turned into a plumbing project. Our place is about thirty miles from any hardware store that is open on Sunday, so I had to drive a ways to get the parts. Three hours later and we were back in business.

The plastic is coming from the community well service. The steel is going to the house and everywhere else. There was a tee right there where my hand is. At least I now know where exactly the service comes in...

The worst part was when I was going to turn off the water the wife says, "how you gonna fix that?". I was a little short fused after my goof and snapped back, "gee, I don't know..." with sarcasm. And the kids were asking me when the guys are going to show up to fix the water... I explained that I am the guy...

Anyone else have a similar Doh! moment?

 

[zzvyb6]

Duct tape.

 

[AGGIE00]

My parents tub drain was leaking and found its way through the sheetrock to the utility room below. On Christmas day, before we were to leave and go home, I offered to cut an access window through the side of the cabinet on the other side of the wall so my dad could fix it later. The copper happened to be right up against the sheetrock, so when I cut ever so carefully with a circular saw I cut through the copper. I ran outside to shut off the water, but the valve striped off. Now I'm really panicing. My next plan was to dig down and break the line and move the flooding outside. After a couple minutes of that my wife yelled to me that the indoor rain was hot. New plan is to run to the water heater and close that valve. Valve is calcified and won't close so back to the excavation project. 5 minutes later we have a guiser ouside and am back to the striped valve. After fighting with the valve that is now under water for 5 more minutes I feel a ball valve on the other side of the meter and it shut fairly easily. 5k later I got my parents house all fixed up. Do you have any idea what a plumber charges on Christmas day? Can's say I blame him though.

 

[nolarefugee]

Holy cow! That was a doozy!

 

[rsewill]

My parents tub drain was leaking and found its way through the sheetrock to the utility room below. On Christmas day, before we were to leave and go home, I offered to cut an access window through the side of the cabinet on the other side of the wall so my dad could fix it later. The copper happened to be right up against the sheetrock, so when I cut ever so carefully with a circular saw I cut through the copper. I ran outside to shut off the water, but the valve striped off. Now I'm really panicing. My next plan was to dig down and break the line and move the flooding outside. After a couple minutes of that my wife yelled to me that the indoor rain was hot. New plan is to run to the water heater and close that valve. Valve is calcified and won't close so back to the excavation project. 5 minutes later we have a guiser ouside and am back to the striped valve. After fighting with the valve that is now under water for 5 more minutes I feel a ball valve on the other side of the meter and it shut fairly easily. 5k later I got my parents house all fixed up. Do you have any idea what a plumber charges on Christmas day? Can's say I blame him though.

Expensive lesson!!

 

[EddieWalker]

I have more then I can count. Seems like you where lucky in that you didn't know it was there. I do it knowing its there, but trying to get closer to it then I should.

Nice to hear it only took a couple hours to fix. The really bad ones take days!!!

Eddie

 

[Pete Judd]

All my outside hydrants have treated 4x4's around them set in concrete to keep this from happening, learned the lesson the hard way years ago. My waterline going to the hydrants is 2 feet underground, and I have to go down to the well house to shut it off. Gave me a lot of reason to put the posts in after a couple of times knocking them out.

 

[creekbend]

Everyone has experienced a Doh! Moment at some time in their life. Some are worse than others. Even though some of these moments can result in costly or embarrassing situations, I regard them as a part of life. Tomorrow will be another day. Hopefully a better day.

 

[300UGUY]

Somewhere on this site, I read a line " a bad mistake is one that money won't fix". It has stayed with me for a few years now.

 

[Barton]

Yes, I have had those "Doh! Moments" in the past. They don't seem to happen quite as often as they use to. Probably because, as I'm getting older, I'm not doing as much or maybe I've wised up a bit and am more cautious.

Aggie, I feel for you. Haven't done anything like that, yet.

 

[Thomas]

We all had our moments and will again ,maybe the good side it didn't happen in middle of winter.

 

[JDgreen227]

As an avid do-it-yourself guy I have had PLENTY of dumb stunts like that one. But one of my favorite sayings is:

"The only people who never (BLEEP) up are the people who never do anything" and you should look back on your experience as a learning point. And if it happens again :laughing: you will know what to do the second time !!!

 

[toppop52]

What I've discovered about plumbing;
1. There are no simple plumbing jobs. It may seem simple, but it will have b@stard threads, be rotted, stripped or cracked and the shutoff valve won't!
2. You can never just repair one thing. When you start to replace the faucet, the pipe is corroded, so you try to replace that and the union is bad, etc...

My conclusions.......plumbing sucks!!!

 

[JDgreen227]

What I've discovered about plumbing;
1. There are no simple plumbing jobs. It may seem simple, but it will have b@stard threads, be rotted, stripped or cracked and the shutoff valve won't!
2. You can never just repair one thing. When you start to replace the faucet, the pipe is corroded, so you try to replace that and the union is bad, etc...

My conclusions.......plumbing sucks!!!

One of my good friends is a retired building engineer, he can construct the most beautiful oak furniture from stock lumber, yet he will pay a plumber to do the most simple tasks like replacing a faucet O-ring because he wants nothing to do with something that might leak.

 

[nolarefugee]

All my outside hydrants have treated 4x4's around them set in concrete to keep this from happening, learned the lesson the hard way years ago. My waterline going to the hydrants is 2 feet underground, and I have to go down to the well house to shut it off. Gave me a lot of reason to put the posts in after a couple of times knocking them out.

I'm going to try the 4x4 posts...

 

[moored4]

All my outside hydrants have treated 4x4's around them set in concrete to keep this from happening, learned the lesson the hard way years ago. My waterline going to the hydrants is 2 feet underground, and I have to go down to the well house to shut it off. Gave me a lot of reason to put the posts in after a couple of times knocking them out.

I have also taken a 55 gallon plastic drum and cut it in half cut a big hole in the top/bottom leaving about a 2" rim around the edge dig the hole big enough so the barrel fits over the 4x4 post and bib, fill it with base ball size river rock! Its easy to clean out the rock, lift the barrel and the whole is close to being deep enough to fix the "DOU! MOMENT". It also allows drainge at the bib so you dont have a muddy puddle there all the time!

 

[Larry Caldwell]

My biggest oops came when I was remodeling a clothing store. The old store had elevated cast concrete window displays, and the new owner wanted the floor flat. I hauled out a jackhammer and started busting concrete. The basement below was vacant, so I didn't think to check what was hanging from the concrete, which turned out to be a 3" fire sprinkler line. When the concrete went down, so did the line, which broke it open. The store was a full city block and the other end of the basement was partitioned off into a data center with millions of dollars worth of computer equipment. They got into a panic and pulled the plug when the fire alarm went off, but we got the water shut off before any of their equipment got wet. Then they wanted me to pay for their down time.

 

[AGGIE00]

My biggest oops came when I was remodeling a clothing store. The old store had elevated cast concrete window displays, and the new owner wanted the floor flat. I hauled out a jackhammer and started busting concrete. The basement below was vacant, so I didn't think to check what was hanging from the concrete, which turned out to be a 3" fire sprinkler line. When the concrete went down, so did the line, which broke it open. The store was a full city block and the other end of the basement was partitioned off into a data center with millions of dollars worth of computer equipment. They got into a panic and pulled the plug when the fire alarm went off, but we got the water shut off before any of their equipment got wet. Then they wanted me to pay for their down time.

This reminds me of a large DOH moment which occured when I was a superintendent for a site and utility contractor. We were building a large retail site for a Linens and Things and Circuit City which were the anchors and then a whole bunch of smaller shops. The property was adjacent to a Home Depot. The existing water main we needed to tie into came from under the home depot parking lot and was 10' deep for some reason. The city inspector would not let us touch the valve going to the 12" stub and assured me he was on his way to close the valve. Not wanting to waste time I told my utility forement to excavate down until he found the blowoff riser which should be about 4' above the plug and then stop and wait for the inspector. He did as I asked and found exaclty what we planned for. What we didn't consider was that the fill around the plug was sand and that the line was at 120psi. Even though we hadn't disturbed the soil to 4' above the plug and it had a significant thrust block, the pipe pushed out and seperated at a joint under the home depot parking lot. I wish tall could see how much water comes out of a 12" line at 120psi. It took 5 minutes to extend our valve wrench, find the valve lid which was under a river at this point, and shut off the water. We came inches from flooding out the store and did flood out some sheetrock in front, and water jacked about an acre of parking lot. 10 minutes after the water was shut off there were still guisers at all the expansion joints in the concrete as it settled back down. We ended up with a crater under the main drive that took 20cy of flowable fill to fix. Oops

 

[nolarefugee]

Doh!! That's incredible. What did the fella you were waiting for have to say when he got there?

 

[JDgreen227]

Larry's story reminded me of the time back in the late '60's when my dad and I were helping my uncle, a self-employed excavation contractor, do a job for a local car dealership. It was about 7 pm on a Saturday night and the dealership was closed, and we were there to install new shop hoists. Well, my uncle was running a Case backhoe, and unknown to him, the water main for the entire building was right below his digging area, and he hit it, it was a pretty good sized water pipe, the hole filled fast and the water began flooding the service area and heading for the newly carpeted sales floor...this was before email and cell phones, took my uncle quite a while to find somebody who would come out and shut off the water...:laughing: