Another easy project fighting to a draw...

[gkainz]

I don't know what it is about all these "should be easy" projects I've been taking on lately, but another "10 minute project" wrestled me to a draw after an hour. My daughter and son-in-law just bought a house from a bank foreclosure and I'm helping them put a lot of the neglected items back in working order.

Last weekend we worked over the sprinkler system, replacing burst lines, cracked valves and broken heads that resulted from not winterizing the system (even tho the house had stickers on the doors and windows claiming that the house was winterized before they bought it).

Yesterday we tried to revive the evaporative cooler and discovered the water line in the attic that feeds the cooler was not winterized and leaked like a soaker hose due to the copper pipe freezing and splitting in a number of places. I arranged to come over early this morning before the attic got too hot to work in and cut out the bad chunk of line and splice in a new piece. "10 minutes - tops!" I told my son-in-law... So, it seems like the 1/4" copper line must have swelled considerably when it froze, because the compression ring refuses to go over the old pipe. We cut back and cut back and cut back from the bad parts of the line and never did get a good piece of pipe to fasten the unions to. So, tomorrow I guess we'll climb back up into attic to pull some new 1/4" copper pipe in.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

rest assured in no way are you alone in these tasks, Greg. I could bore you with many many similar stories on my projects. I am the proud owner of a 3yr guest-garage project and once took 7 yrs to restore an airplane (I have plenty of good excuses!)

Now when people say "How long will that take?" or "When will it be done?", regarding my "fun" after-hours tinkering, I say, "It's not that kind of project", or, "It's not a time-oriented project, I am just having fun!"

PS re water pipes in the attic. You might appreciate this one - At work we have two water heaters. When one goes out, it can take me ages to have it replaced for various reasons which is a real pain to the staff. So last spring I spent a weekend in the attic sweating copper tubing and installed a third tank which I can bring online in 5 minutes when one of them goes, and then turn off the dead one, replace it at my leisure. I have empathy for your crawling around in attic spaces, running pipes in the fiberglass!

 

[Brian Austin]

I've finally come to the conclusion that I simply don't know how long something is going to take. When someone asks how long, I usually respond "if you need it that fast, I'm not your guy".

 

[wsuffa]

Famous last words: "This won't take much time at all".

Every one of my house projects has turned into something larger. A couple of bad siding boards? Oops, there's an old termite tunnel and half a wall of bad boards. Need to change a light switch? Cr*p that switch was on knob-and-tube with bad insulation (or the previous owner used speaker wire/zip cord to wire it). Wet spot in the ground outside near a sprinkler head? Oooh, the leaking pipe goes to a faucet, and someone buried copper water pipe.... Etc. Etc.

I like owning old houses with their unique features. They come with many years of issues to resolve.

No longer do I estimate completion times. It's done when it's done.

Sigh.

 

[fgcason]

You could have probably got it done in 5 minutes IF you hadn't declared ahead of time how long it would take.

I did the same thing with the motorcycle carburetors back in September. "I'll just go grab the carbs, clean them up and rehang them tomorrow morning. Shouldn't take more than 3, maybe 4 hours tops"...300 PIECES AND TWO WEEKS LATER...

It just reminded me of the old rule I've always lived by: Don't start the clock when the wrenches come out because it's going to take a while.


It'll be done when it's done and not before then.

 

[ScottM]

This is also why when a mechanic tells me it will only take a couple of hours to fix --blank-- on my plane in my head I give the a couple of days to really get it done.