Originally Posted By Mrs 2oon Ed...my mom has used something called Liquid Wrench to help her with rusty bolts on her toilet. You just put some of the liquid on the rusty bolt and after it sits for awhile it loosens up. It won't help now but maybe in the future it could.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom How about the time my otherhalf put a Dixie Chics CD in the CD player of the our vehicle and it jammed. That was expensive to repair.
Originally Posted By alexbook Ah, the joys of being a tenant. If the place falls apart, there's always the landlord to yell at.
Originally Posted By CrouchingTigger At one point, I made a brilliant decision to put our sprinklers on a high pressure line, so the pressure into the house wouldn’t drop when the sprinklers came on. Estimated cost of the job: about $5 and 3 hours work. I found where I could remove an elbow from the main line right before the pressure regulator, right above the gate valve that would shut off water to the house. I turned off the water, disconnected the pressure regulator, put a wrench on that elbow and twisted… …and sheared the water main off right at ground level. Water started shooting into the air. I ran a grabbed a wrench I have that is used to shut the water off at the curb and turned it off. I dug down where the water main was broken and tried to unscrew the pipe to fix it, only to discover that the iron pipe was so old, every time I tried to unscrew it at any joint, all it did was break. I had to go and rent a trencher to dig out the main, and then replace the whole line with a copper pipe. Total cost: (IIRC) somewhere North of $500 and two days. (And that cost was so low because I could do the work without hiring a plumber.)
Originally Posted By Autopia Deb We interupt this program for a Public Service Announcement: To all owners of in-sink garbage disposals. A lesson my mother and I learned years ago, but apparently forgot to tell my sister about... NEVER put potato peelings in the sink! We will now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
Originally Posted By ReadingMom ^ I have heard about potato peelings. Don't put egg shells in there either! I found that one out the hard way.
Originally Posted By sherrytodd Well I've had two loads of laundry destroyed now by not finding my son's crayons in the pockets till they go through the drier. Went to the Crayola site and they said to use WD-40. Well, I went through a whole can of the stuff and it doesn't work. NOTHING WORKS! (Though I now know that WD-40 works really well on oily stains like salad dressing) The last load of laundry was all my work clothes. That was pretty expensive to replace.
Originally Posted By CrouchingTigger I put egg shells in all the time with no problem. Are they really supposed to clog it up? I learned my lesson with potato peelings the hard way, though.
Originally Posted By beamerdog My builder told me never to put anything down the disposal that you wouldn't put down your own throat, lol. Plumbers aren't so up front about it since they've made tons of money from our family putting weird stuff down the disposal, lol. I haven't had a problem since. Hint: stay away from banana peels and larger fish bones. Most of my expensive repairs have been from family members backing into my cars :-(
Originally Posted By LacyBelle I've never had a problem with either potato peelings or egg shells, but will now heed the warning from my fellow LPers and discontinue that practice. Thanks all.
Originally Posted By CrouchingTigger Looks like a lot of people have had some education the hard way with garbage disposals here.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA In general, people put too much food debris into the sink -- even with a garbage disposal. I've gotten in the habit just scraping plates and dumping old food into a Hefty bag and taking it out to the main garbage can.
Originally Posted By Lisann22 We actually have a recycling program now with our City Waste Management. All homes are given a little pail that can sit in your sink or under the sink to through your scraps, peels, etc of food into. You then dump it into a larger recycling bin that goes to your curb once a week. It works well and keeps the cost of the garbage disposal down. ;>
Originally Posted By dltraveler I have a story of what happened to a friend of mine who was house/petsitting for us. I promise, I'm not making this up. She had invited some friends over for dinner (it was fine with us). While making dinner, she dumped a bunch of potato peelings down the disposal, and like the other poster, both sides of the sink backed up. She called off dinner at this point. She took a bucket, and placed it under the drain, and went to take off the pipe to get all the peelings out. The pipe, being 30 years old, broke. This made quite a mess with peelings everywhere under the sink. She put the bucket on the side, and started cleaning up the mess. In the meantime, the cat, being a cat, decided to explore, and dumped over the bucket of mucky water and peelings. So, now she has a backed up sink, a broken pipe, and a floor covered in dirty water. She locked the cat in the bathroom and went back to cleaning up. After she finished the clean up, she let the cat out of the bathroom, where she discovered that she should have put the litter box in there with him. Apparently, he had to pee, and lacking any other soft place to go, he decided that her new swimsuit that she had left on the floor would have to do. I'm not sure what she did with the swimsuit, I was afraid to ask. Miraculously, the cat was still alive when we came home. Anyway, after several trips back and forth to the hardware store for parts, she fixed the pipes, and put everything away. When we came home, she told us the tale. When we managed to stop laughing, we reimbursed her for her efforts and expenses and thought that was the end of it. Now, we never really use the left side of the sink, but after a while, we noticed that it was draining rather slowly. Eventually, we took apart the pipes again and found that the pipes on that side of the sink were full of...potato peelings. I guess she forgot to empty that side as well. This happened not long after we bought the place, and ever since then, we've dump everything in the trash rather than risk an episode such as that. She never wanted to pet-sit for us again.
Originally Posted By avromark ""Why did we buy a house that was built in 1959?"" - Did I tell you about the mistake of buying a not even year old forclosure property? I'm now north of 10,000 for materials and my basement is almost fully habitable (Just need to do the trim now). As well I've found some umm nice euphanisms written on my floor joists, that when I moved in had to paint over. As well never buy a car to impress a girlfriend, that car may turn into a 30k hole that may have had to be replaced with a car that at least works for under 10k. Heh. Live and learn. The question is has everyone learnt from their mistakes? As well is your garborator (Canadian term for it) continuous feed or batch feed? I heard you should never use a broom handle to shove your rinds into them
Originally Posted By CrouchingTigger >>I heard you should never use a broom handle to shove your rinds into them << I saw a History Channel program where they talked about the garbage disposal. The guy said that, at one time, to demonstrate the usefullness of it, they would put all kinds of food down it. Then they would bring out a big plate of frozen beef ribs and shove them down. He said it would sound like H-E-double hockey sticks, but it would eventually grind them up.
Originally Posted By avromark <<Then they would bring out a big plate of frozen beef ribs and shove them down.>> So that's where my dinner went!
Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy <I learned my lesson with potato peelings the hard way, though.> See CrouchingTigger, if you would spend that time you used putting potato peelings down the sink by shopping for Heinz ketchup instead, that wouldn't have happened. ;-) (heehee, ain't I a stinker?)
Originally Posted By alexbook >>Asparagus and Celery will eat at your wallet too!<< Oh, no! It's the attack of the voracious vegetables!
