Not long ago, we noticed our water bill beginning to skyrocket. We had plumbers here to install whole-house water filters outside. Checking their work, they pointed out a little spinning disk that I had never noticed in the middle of the water meter. It was going spin-spin stop-stop. We had a leak. After a bit of checking, it was clearly not their doing.
After digging a dozen holes along the length of the pipe going to the casita (little house behind), and finding no moisture, I called Enrique, a nice, mellow plumber from Peru. We determined there was a leak underneath the casita (i.e., impossible to fix), so he installed a cutoff valve. At length we discussed how to re-plumb outside, tap into the cold line on the exterior bathroom wall, all without breaking tile inside – we had a plan!
Alas, perhaps Enrique has been in Uruguay too long. I said I’d get back to him when the weather got a little more pleasant for outside work. This has been a mild winter, but it’s still winter. So, sun appears! And no response from Enrique to text messages; phone calls terminated before a chance to leave a message.
Well, we have other issues with the main house, so I sought the advice of Daniel, the guy who will be solving many of them. I had bought bricks, and was preparing to create a subterranean box around the valve.
This is how you do it, with mortar, and when you’ve built up to ground level there’s a nifty little concrete frame and cover that fir perfectly. But, I thought, if they need to re-route the tubes, maybe I shouldn’t do this first. I explained to Daniel the plan Enrique and I had come up with. He agreed with the overall plumbing plan, but hadn’t answered my question.
So I asked again. Well, he said, if we’re putting a new cutoff valve on the outside bathroom wall, we will simply remove this one.
(See title.)
Anyone need a few crappy Uruguayan bricks and a kilo of Portland cement?
