I’m no expert on home construction, but if you come into the plumbing department, I bet I can tell you if your rough plumbing was put in on a Monday or a Friday.
There is a definite difference between a “Monday” plumber and a “Friday” plumber. Early in the week, the professionals, and the not so professional, that come into my department are looking for very explicit items. They come in looking for specific pieces of pipe; “Do you have any 3 inch double wyes with a street fitting on a 45 degree with 57 count female thread along the downhill side of the coupling flange?”
They need just the right fittings and have very detailed explanations for why they need exactly what they need; “I have a dock that I need to plumb a sink on, I want to use brass fittings on the faucets and schedule 80 pipe for the drains. I’ll need a p-trap with an 18 inch 1-1/2 wall tube and the gaskets for the strainers have to be galvanized. Oh, and I’d like to use stainless steel in the strainer baskets.”
If I can’t provide them with what they want, they cheerfully state that they will just drive over the bridge to the plumbing supply house two towns over, that will probably take only 35 minutes or so even if the traffic is terrible.
By Friday, things have drastically changed. Many of these same professional, who are now not looking so professional, will grab anything on the shelf that they think they might be able to get to work. They wander the department looking for any help they can find from the boxes on the shelf, while mumbling about how they can probably can get it hooked up by using some of this (whatever they have I their hand), some JB Weld, and stuff they think they might have left over from an earlier job in the back of their truck.
If I can’t come even close to providing them with what they want, they get all red in the face and start threatening me. They seem to be very sure that I will be upset by them telling me that: “There is no way in hell I’m going to drive all the way over the bridge, to a plumbing supply house that is two towns away, while fighting 35 minutes of traffic that will be terrible.”
If you tell me that for some reason the fittings under you bathroom sink seem to fly off of the pipes every once in a while when you shower in the morning, I can assure you that they where installed late in the week.
If you gave me a tide chart and an approximate month when you think you house was nearly finished, I bet I could even pinpoint the time. I would guess, probably pretty correctly, that the sinks where plumbed sometime after two in the afternoon on a Friday when the fish were biting at low tide near the connector to the Isle of Palms.
I would further bet a week’s pay, that the valves on the pipes where fitted by the plumbers junior helper who I suspect didn’t have a great grasp of the English language. My guess would be that he probably attached the shut off valves to the pipes using the last bit of whatever glue he had enough left of in the bottom of the can.
It’s also a near certainty that he attached the valves with the same stuff he used to glue up the drain pipes in the crawl space under your house.
He probably didn’t get the message that the blue can gets used under the house and the black can gets used under the sink. He just used whatever he had left over since it was close to quitting time and the boss was on the water.
If your fittings come off under your sink whenever you and your two neighbors take showers at the same time as you , then it’s a good bet that one or more of your pipes are lying on the ground under your house, completely disconnected from the towns sewer system. If your fittings come off of the vales under your sink, then check for the smell of rotting eggs under your house. Both calamities are directly tied to the problem of “Friday” plumbers.
If you bring me the sections of pipe you had to cut loose to dislodge the well pump you need to replace for your sprinkler system, I can tell before you get even halfway down the aisle if your system was installed on a Friday.
Friday systems have about 7 couplings that just don’t need to be there and the pipe sizes jump around from ½ to ¾ and up to 1 inch and then back down again. Belligerent customers will tell me that they need to replace the sections with exactly the same stuff because that’s how it was installed.
Few believe me when I tell them that the way it was installed had more to do with what the plumber, if he was even a plumber, had left over on his truck on a Friday. They are convinced that they need the 2 inch male fitting that has been reduced to ¾ inch on one side and to ½ inch on the other by an ungainly series of nearly a dozen couplings, bushings and adapters. When I show them how in one step they can get from ¾ inch to ½ inch they simply remain convinced that they need exactly what they have because that’s what the guy did the first time.
When I ask them how long they have had the pump, they tell me the pump quit just about the same time as the warranty ran out. “My last one ran for 25 years without a problem, but this one was trouble from the beginning and I only got a year out of the damn thing!”
No sense pointing out that maybe the pump didn’t last because it had to push water through a series of jacked up fittings that were never designed to be used in the exceedingly creative manner with which they are glued together as set out before the both of us.
You just can’t make any money by telling people the truth. I simply grab up all the fittings they need to re-create the monstrosity of water that they brought into the store. Then I show them where the replacement pumps are on the shelf making sure to point out where the warranty card is in the box.
I also tell them about the 800 number the pump company provides in case they need any additional help installing the new pump into the old system. Just once I’d like to listen in on the phone calls when these guys try to explain how the pump is hooked up. I’ love to hear how they describe the water running to and from the pump through a PVC version of a Picasso sculpture.
