Dumbplumber Rants on Plumbing

This is a post that I did on my original website www.dumbplumber.com. Since I am now posting using blogger I thought I would repost it here.

Every occupation has it own ups and downs. The Dumb Plumber has a list of irritations.
Disclaimer: resemblance to actual people, living or dead may be entirely accidental....or not.

Memo:

From: The Dumb Plumber,

To: Lawyers, Doctors, and Stock Brokers
And others holding certificates of higher learning and deeds to vacation property in our fair intermountain community.


The following is a short list of facts that was somehow not conveyed to you during your extensive collegiate experience:

A) Water freezes at and below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. This may explain why, after not winterizing before leaving last fall, the lower floor of your summer home resembled a Louisiana swamp when you arrived.

B) The toilet is neither a garbage can, waste basket, or a sandbox for your two year old. So that feigned look of surprise is lost on me when I fish the toy telephone or other unmentionable, from the goose neck of your toilet.

C) You will be unable to contact your maintenance man on Friday evening of the first three day weekend of the year. He regrets that you failed to let him know of your arrival a week or two earlier and you and your guests have no electricity, water or phone service. He has turned off his answering machine and gone away, so he won’t ruin his weekend doing what he could have done the week before.

D) For those of you who choose to live in the urban cesspools with your traffic jams, signal lights, rude drivers and street gangs, you might appreciate that we do not. Most of us living here were not born here and we like NOT hearing car alarms, panhandlers, and that little annoying beep when car doors lock. You might be shocked to learn that unless we have left our prize retriever or an engraved shotgun in our pickup trucks, we don’t even lock our doors when we go to the post office or grocery store. In fact, in the 20 years I have been here the only auto theft was from a store owner who left his keys in the ignition for the past 30 years.

E) I won’t be repairing that electric oven the day before Thanksgiving that you know has been broken since before Labor Day. (I know you are wondering why a Dumb Plumber is repairing appliances, but up here we wear more than one hat).

F) Please don’t bother reminding me that I could be making $80 to $90 per hour in the city, when I wouldn’t live there for $500 per hour. There are some things more important than money.

G) Please don’t try to tell the Dumb Plumbers wife, in painful detail, what that little that annoying popping sound is like coming from your gas water heater, after she has told you that I will not be home for a few hours. It’s not that she doesn’t sympathize, but her degrees are in anthropology and finance and is politely answering my phone, while busy with her own career. These protracted descriptions will most likely delay any repairs
.

H) If you have no mechanical abilities whatsoever, please don’t let that cute little babe in the orange apron at Home Depot tell you that you can do this job. The Dumb Plumber gets really annoyed fixing someone else’s screw ups and absolutely livid when trying to repair fixtures with repair parts 75 or more miles away. Always buy critical fixtures with repair parts sold locally


I) When engaging the Dumb Plumber to perform installations or repairs to residential fixtures, please do not tell him that YOU used to be in the “business” or that your brother-in-law knows how to do this. If that brother-in-law knows so damn much, then get him up here from L.A. to do it.

J) For Gods sake, don’t tell the Dumb Plumber about building, plumbing or electrical codes. In my 20 years here I have witnessed that, half of the residential construction in our community over 30 years old is a hodgepodge of materials and workmanship, the envy of 1950’s Appalachia. And to add insult to injury, this hodgepodge was most likely the efforts of your next door neighbor and his cousins performing these tasks over a weekend with the previous owner, involving the better half of a bottle of Jack Daniels.

K) Of course helping the Dumb Plumber is always a plus. He is ever amused when you explain why your main supply of water is delivered by a patchwork of copper, PVC, galvanized, vinyl and black iron pipes (not to mention the occasional heater hose). I know that these eclectic segments were the product of limited time and random resources. However, understand that your explanation is falling on deaf ears and Dueling Banjos is playing in the Dumb Plumbers’ head.

L) The Dumb Plumber just loves late night calls. Yes, that 10 P.M. call that there is a faucet dripping really inspires the Dumb Plumber to jump into his tool belt and respond at light speed to the perceived threat of water loss. Truth is, the Dumb Plumber shuts off his answer phone volume at 8 P.M. and reviews the previous night’s calls the next morning after coffee and the paper.

M) If you don’t know how to shut off your water supply from your pressure tank or the community water system, or if you don’t know where your septic tank or lift station is located, or if you don’t know where your pump or water supply comes from, you need to. Ignorance of these things is a great annoyance to the Dumb Plumber. It will cost you a lot of money to have him do the job that your well driller, septic tank installer, general contractor, real estate agent or previous seller should have done.