What Does This Button Do?

Hey all, this is Matt, finally contributing to the blog. Every now and then epic events need to be told from a different perspective (even if they are a bit long). A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me if I would purchase another ‘fixer-upper.’ Although I do not know for certain if I would, I do know that the following would not happen in a normal house…

Our shower knob is simple. Pull on for power. Spin left for hot, right for cold. Easy and efficient, perfect for a shower. However, from the first day we moved in this simple mechanism has not been so simple. To pull on meant to pull with a small amount of force as something inside was sticking.

Enter our hero. I figured, surely if there is a sticky problem then I know the perfect anti-sticky solution. WD-40! I mean, what can’t it do? Smells great, washes off pretty much everything you can get on yourself, loosens all sorts of stuck things, when lit burns like a maniac and I’m sure if you were bold enough to try, tastes great.

The problem with this solution is I had to get inside the valve mechanism to administer my miracle. I poked and prodded trying to get the knob off but with little initial success. So what does any wannabe amateur plumber do? He pries a little harder. Now I do not know if I actually broke the plastic sleeve part of the knob, but if I didn’t, I sure didn’t help it any. Well, I finally got it all apart and sprayed the living daylights out of it and put it all back together. Unfortunately, the simple knob is now in two pieces.

Well, my miracle solution did work. However, being in a shower and a very wet environment it quickly wore off. Sad times indeed for us.

Fast forward a few months. (Zoooooom)

Our theoretically simple shower device has now become a rather irritating and frustrating thing to operate. No longer is a small amount of force needed to pull it on. Instead, two hands are usually needed to apply the proper force. In fact, one leg on the wall to brace yourself as you pull with all our might is probably a more accurate picture. Ha! Like good new homeowners we hoped the maintenance man would come around and fix it. Oh yea...we’re homeowners.

The other night I hear Jackie head in to take a shower. The water turns on then quickly turns back off. So maybe I just thought she was going to take a shower. She comes out and tells me that this metal ring inside the valve is loose and in fact the reason she shut off the water was because some water had oozed out behind it. Like any good hero I head in.

Sure enough, the ring is loose. Could this have been the solution to our problem all along? Jackie attempted to tighten it with our pipe wrench (which everyone on the planet should have), but lets be honest, she’s a girl. So I got in there and gave it a manly reef to tighten it down. (grunt, grunt, grunt, oh oh oh!) We put the knob back on the whole thing and tried to pull it on but I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that by superhumanly tightening this ring down made it virtually impossible to turn on the shower. Well then, if this ring made it more difficult to pull on then obviously; taking it off completely would totally eliminate any stickiness issues.

When I was in college I took one of those silly online surveys that after answering a bunch of questions predicted what your last words on earth will be. I have always found it fitting that my last words will be, “What does this button do?” Anyhow…

I proceeded to completely remove the intrusive ring from what I knew would be a perfectly working shower. I grabbed our needle nose pliers to try and pull out the valve system in order to test our shower without having to screw the knob handle back on. I gently pulled it fully expecting water to come flowing out of the spigot. Dang it all, it didn’t even move! So, in my great and infinite wisdom, I pulled harder.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen plenty of plumbers work. I mean really, any profession that is known for publicly and frequently showing way too much information should be brought into question. However, though they may not be known for their acute mental abilities, they have discovered the simplest and most efficient way to move water from point A to point B. No frills, no gimmicks just pure simplicity.

Yet, knowing all of this I pulled harder.

You see, this silly little ring that surely was causing all of our problems was quite actually doing its job. It turns out that what this simple and unobtrusive ring does is hold the entire mechanism in the wall.

In my zeal to be the hero, and faced with a stupid little piece of metal and plastic that wasn’t playing my game and not moving, I pulled rather firmly. For about the first ½ second things went perfectly well. It was the second ½ second that got me into trouble. Before I could even react to what was happening, the water pressure helped move this valve outward and the entire inner guts of the shower valve was free of the wall in my hot little hand.

In case you have ever been curious. Water will quite easily shoot clear across the length of the tub and hit with full vigor the wall on the other side.

All of a sudden we had water going everywhere. This 2-3 inch tube of water was hitting the far wall and going in all directions. Jackie and I simply stood there for the first 5 seconds or so in pure shock. We looked at each other and then burst out into laughter! Is this really happening? I mean, Really!?!

Laughter echoing throughout the bathroom we burst into a flurry of activity to try and prevent the water that was not staying inside the tub from flowing freely wherever it desired. I then looked at Jackie and said,

“You gotta get in there and shove this thing back in the hole to stop the water!”

Jackie – “Why do I have to do that?”

Matt – “Because you are mostly ready to take a shower anyhow. Besides, someone’s gotta go out and turn the water off outside.”

So Jackie hops in the shower and I throw closed the shower curtain to try and contain as much water as possible. She attempts to brave the stream of water by shoving that stupid valve back into the wall but the water pressure is just too much. So instead of helping our situation, this process is making water spray even worse. I toss her a few towels over the side and head outside to turn off the water.

Mind you, it’s around 11:30 pm, it’s snowing, a dang gopher at some point had burrowed through the valve box outside filling it with mud, and I’m trying to hurry because I know water is going everywhere in the bathroom. Finally, I got the water turned off and went to survey the damage.

Jackie, who was standing mid-shin in water already, was obviously soaking wet, along with a good bit of the rest of the bathroom. All we could do was laugh. It was quite literally one of those bizarre and strange situations which had we somehow managed to capture it all on film would have won us $10,000 on America’s Funniest Home Videos.

With the water off we were able to find all the random pieces floating in the tub and put the mechanism back together. It fit nicely back into the wall and when we turned the water back on we had no leaks. Praise the Lord.

The moral of the story? I dunno. You pick.

1. Don’t trust Matt to be a plumber.
2. Always have a steady supply of towels nearby.
3. Film everything you ever do…cause after all, you just never know.