The bad news is the leak is in the wall behind the shower. The water fell through the wall down to the sub-floor and spread out from there to leak out through holes in the floor for the various plumbings making it look worse than it is.
The good news is I see no reason why the water lines in the wall would freeze and crack when the ones below the floor didn't. There is a very good chance the problem is that the shower knobs were not seated right or tight enough. When I removed the hot water knob in the shower, a small rubber gasket was wadded up in a ball in the pipe. I had shut off the hot water line previously and the main leak stopped. A bit of time passed while I was tending to other miniscule drips in the system and that let me know there was a much smaller leak in the cold water knob of the shower.
The bad news is, if it's not the knobs I'll have to go through the tile in the shower.
The good news is it will only take the removal of two of the white field tiles directly around the knobs to get to the connections.
There was other bad news to be found when I removed the cover of the plumbing insulation box. A damn varmint had been living in there. I kind of knew that and spent a good deal of caulk and foam sealing up all the potential entries. There were all kinds of chewed insulation, empty seeds and mouse turds. Gross!
I thought mice had been living in there in the past tense until I noticed a round hole at the back wall of the plumbing insulation box and when I looked closer a damn varmint stuck his head out. Damn varmint! This is war!
Before I started any plumbing it seemed essential to my mental well being to spend some quality time in the roadside vegetable garden. The time to plant the main crops is fast approaching.
I did a little weeding in the rows thinking about where things would go and edged the exuberant chaos back along the perimeter. There are Shasta Daisy, Purple Coneflower and Gloriosa Daisy in the vegetable garden that need to find new homes. They may all go to the client with the new retaining walls.
This is looking to be a very good strawberry year. I did see a few berries that looked brown and frost bit. No worries. There will still be more than we can handle I hope.
My poor potatoes though. They got bit bad. I'm still thinking they have more than enough life left in them to bounce back.
Lettuce, spinach, they don't mind the cold at all. This is my best spinach year ever. I think it stayed cold enough during the germination period to keep the fresh sprout eaters away.
I prepped a row for the sweet corn. I don't know where I will be able to fit another row of corn in for a later second sowing. Seems the garden shrank this year.
Could be because those two little rows of strawberries I planted last spring have turned into giant patches and they take up real estate permanently.
This is not the year to expand the roadside vegetable garden further. I'll get ample food with the space I have. We need to see how the new routine pans out. I'm still thinking I may actually move into the cozy cabin one day soon and that will change meal time routines even more.
The good news is my wood chip mulch cuts down on weeding time dramatically and I won't have to spend much of my scarce time doing that. Could there be better photographic proof of the weed suppressing power of wood chip mulch than the roadside vegetable garden with the wildflower surround?
For now I'm still at the resident gardeners house. There is much to enjoy within easy walking and viewing distance.
The columbine are blooming in a rainbow of colors.
It's never always all bad news.
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3 comments:
You reminded me of Yosemite Sam! Except, hey, wait a second, he's the Bad Guy and You're the Good Guy! There will always be varmints - but you'll eventually work out their favorite hiding spots and put and end to that. Well, that is, until the cats bring them in, like ours did with a poor lizard today.... One lizard minus a tail was redeposited in the yard this afternoon, and I hope he knows better than to show up on the Cat Porch again.
Water, a soothing thing, but can be troublesome at times. Sure hope that there isn't too much demolition to be done for a fix.
Gardening is always a mind fixer for me. Just a simpler thing to ease troubles of the mind. Picked my first bush beans & a bell pepper this A.M. That will make for a nice meal this P.M. This looks to be a good yr. for the bell peppers. Usually get none. Banana peppers are not good this yr. but in past they were gang busters.
Your blooms look very pretty. Still a lot to enjoy.
Varmints, hope you eliminate them. They for sure are a no-no.
It appears that you have the best of two worlds right now. The veggie garden looks expectant. I just hates those varmints. I hope you win the war.
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