On Tuesday, Steve cut a hole in the wall of the 2nd bedroom upstairs so the plumber could have access to fix the leak. His findings? The leak was coming from the shower head connection inside the wall.
It was good to have a licensed plumber confirm that "the plumbing work looks good," but not so good to hear that if our contractor had fully tightened the shower head arm to the water supply, there would have been NO leak at all. It took 2-3 more turns for it to be tightened and stop leaking.
I'd say this falls under Stupid Contractor Tricks, wouldn't you? Price of carelessness? Twenty minutes, $85.00 and half a ceiling missing and a large portion of wall gone. We haven't called our contractor yet to fix it because we are "drying out".
The plumber said that this little "boo boo" was nothing compared to the dumb and incompetent things he's encountered in his career. One story he told was about a homeowner that hired an unscrupulous contractor to put a bathroom in a basement. The toilet was installed but the drain was never connected to the sewer pipe. It was a seldom used bathroom, but eventually the toilet was not working and they removed it. What did they find? A toilet draining into the dirt under their concrete floor directly underneath their home!
Our little problem didn't even make his Top 10, but he said it was a stupid mistake and if our contractor had tested it before he sealed up the wall, it would have been abundantly clear.
But why didn't he test it??? Sleep deprivation? Bad mood? Stubborn arrogance? Could be any of those. I know he isn't incompetent, but he must be watched carefully, which Steve did for the most part.
Anyway, the happy ending part is that the problem wasn't in the kitchen or worse than it was. Now, back to business. Tomorrow, we're planning to weather strip some windows in the basement and start the work patching and repairing the plaster ceiling in the basement where it was damaged with the post replacement last year. First step is the lathe...
1 comment:
We had the exact same thing happen to us. You would think that plumbers would really tighten things that go in the wall...
We just patched the hole this summer that we created as a result. (actually we put molding up that covered it)
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