Posted by Zero on September 25, 1998 at 15:46:05:
In Reply to: Plumbing is very, very evil... posted by Gonk on September 24, 1998 at 18:54:33:
Hehe, you think that's bad Gonk? Let me tell ya a little story of my own. :P
One day about two weeks ago I woke up in the morning and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, take a shower, etc. etc., get ready for school. It turned out nobody had flushed the toilet, so I proceeded to execute this mundane function as I have hundreds of times over the span of my 14 years.
*LOW AND BEHOLD, THE TOILET DOES NOT FLUSH*
I attempt to flush it again, thinking I had not pushed the lever down all the way. *LOW AND BEHOLD...* Well, you get the point. :P
So I utter a few pretty vulgar swears, kick the thing a few times (which only results in a painfully stubbed toe) and crank the top on that bad boy. For some reason, there is no water in the tank; the valves are dry as Death.
So here I am at 4:00 in the morning in my bathroom staring puzzled into the depths of a toilet. Story continues.
I leave the thing alone for a day and return at 2:30 in the afternoon after another boring day of school to find what looked like the Plumber's Convention in my backyard. Trucks, vans, the whole nine yards. I find my mother and ask her just what the heck is going on. It appears that our well's pumping engine has blown itself up *IN THE WELL CASING*. We need to pull it up, extract the destroyed chunks, and then insert a new engine and new cable rigging for it (the old ones were shredded by the blast). And it just so *!(*^# happens that our well is almost 800 feet deep, and the engine is at the very bottom of this well, so therefore the cable rigging is 800 feet long. And the cable rigging needs to be extracted.
So for the next six hours a group of plumbers use a Jeep with a rear winch to haul that rigging down the road for 800 feet, charred and burnt. After some time of this fun, the rigging gets out, and we put a new engine in. The toilets flush again, the sink runs, etc. etc. etc., everyone is happy.
-Zero
P.S: Everyone is happy, that is, except for me and my family...while the plumbers are living the high life, WE ARE OUT $3000 DOLLARS! So be thankful you just had a faulty valve-thingy, Gonk. :-P