Plumbing Woes

I have been fighting a plumbing problem for about one month.I found that the worst place a faucet can go bad is in the shower/tub. Naturally, it was the hot water side. This caused me to have to turn the hot water off on the hot water tank which is accessed outside.

Yesterday, thanks to a very helpful Mark Streater, I drove into town to get a new one. The last time I replaced a leaky faucet, I just pulled the handle off and replaced the double aught washer. No more. Modern technology has once again fixed something that wasn't broke. Now we have stems and seats, O rings and other interesting pieces. In order to find the right parts I had to first remove the old one. Unfortunately, I didn't have the right stuff.

After visiting the two big box stores, Lowes and Home Depot. I bought one at each store, determined not to make a second trip. It worked and I now have normal hot water. The drive home was a different story.

Yesterday morning we started getting lake effect snow which tapered off and then returned about dusk. For those of you that are not familiar with lake effect it is when the air temperature is much colder that the water in the lake. This causes the lake to steam. Thousands of gallons of water evaporated causing a huge cloud which then began to precipitate as fine snow flakes.

As I started back to Bayview, I ran into snow at about Chilco. It got heavier as I got closer to the lake. When I turned east on highway 54 I ran into about three inches of unplowed, drifting snow. By the time I got to Farragut, my car was all over the road. In addition, a deer jumped out so close to me I couldn't have stopped. Fortunately the deer did the right thing and headed for the shoulder.

When I got into Bayview, creeping around sharp turns, (it was greasy slick) I barely made it up the hill and around the hairpin turn on Lime Kiln Rd. But I made it home. I guess it is time to put my snow tires on, huh?