Making it Look Easy

K came over yesterday from Boland Custom Home Improvement and fixed our boiler pipe, and one thing that really impressed was how confident he was and how easy he made it look. A sign of a true professional. I only say this because things like this, especially where plumbing is involved, scare me to the point of being paralyzed. It's not that I'm so afraid of it, it's I'm just terrified of screwing it up, because when you blow it with plumbing, it can really come back to haunt you. Something about water that you don't want to mess around with it. That and electricity.

Now I realize K has a lot of experience, but he did it as if it was his second time doing it. In other words, he knew what he needed, what to do and how to do it, and without hesitation pulled it off. I look at the pipes in our basement and it looks completely insane to me. It makes a little sense, but for the most part, you've got pipes coming off of other pipes, which all lead to everywhere and nowhere at the same time. In all fairness, I did figure out where the pipes leading to the mudroom were, and I did figure out how to shut off the baseboard heating zone, so I get some credit. Even still, to actually cut pipes and try to reconnect them is beyond me.

I did watch K do it, however, and have some sense of what he did, so maybe, just maybe, next time I might be able to pull it off myself. All I need is to get some tools.

Ironically, we had the pipes rerouted because we wanted to go away this weekend and worried about the pipes freezing and house being too cold for the cats, but in the end, it is so warm. The weather is hovering around the low 50's, and I think freezing pipes were not an issue, but how were we to know that?

Backtracking a little, our pipes in our mudroom burst because we don't use the heat. We dealt with it by simply shutting down the zone that connects the baseboard heat, since we don't use it. We need it, however, if we go away, because we have to keep the house warm enough when we're not in it, as every New Englander knows. Since the pipe leaked and we shut down the zone, we couldn't do that.

ANYWAY, we've now cut the mudroom out of the heating loop, and can run the heater if we need to, right as Spring has arrived and cold temps could be a thing of the past. We're just glad to have dealt with it.

Until the next time, thanks for reading.