A neighbor and I were discussing the plumber the other day. As we all live in Military Housing here, we all have the same plumbing team. It's not a choice program. Generally, water comes pouring out of either the ceiling in the dining room or the wall between the dining room and the entry hallway and the maintenance people send the same guys. (No joke, I know many people who have had water spout from these locations -- it seems to be the weak point in our plumbing system.) Any who . . . after our discussion we concluded that our tale sounded absolutely crazy, and that anyone who had never lived it would not believe it. So, for your reading enjoyment I present The Case of the Drain-Unscrewers.
Our plumbing issue began as an electrical problem. We lost power to half of our downstairs, over Thanksgiving weekend, when we had house guests. When regular business resumed the happy electrician came to our house, flipped the switch, everything worked, and he had me sign his trip ticket papers and went on his merry way muttering about Stupid Americans. Stupid Americans, Stupid, Stupid Americans, don't they know how a breaker box works? Ditto for his second trip to our house for the same mysterious electrical problem. However, on the third time, even The Master of Electrons couldn't get the power to come back on. Of course, this was now a Big Job and he needed to go to lunch, so we had to reschedule for the next day.
On electrician trip number 4, the man proceeded to go through every room in my house checking my appliances. Clearly something sinister like my brand new $800 Coffee Goddess must be to blame. It could not possibly be the wiring of a building thrown up quickly after WWII in a country that didn't have a lot of affective building codes at the time. When he determined that everything down to my alarm clock was not to blame, he finally yielded to my suggestion that he concentrate his search to the electrical items on the actual circuit that didn't work. After some persuasion on my part, he pulled out the first outlet in the series that didn't work, located in the wall between my dining room and entry hallway. Eureka! It was wet. "Ah Ha!", he says in his very best German accent, "This is not problem for electrician. It is problem for plumber." He takes my hair drier to said outlet (Cause after all he knew where it was after his extensive recon of the entire house.) flips the power back on, tells us to call for the plumber, and skips off on his merry way.
Several weeks into the investigation of the mysterious electrical problem, we get our first visit from the plumber. He goes straight upstairs to the master bathroom shower. (Located over the kitchen, not the dining room nor the wall in question.) He proceeds to tell me that all Americans unscrew their shower drains and cause the water from the shower to go into the wall rather than into the pipes. If you are a German plumber in an American's home with a water leakage problem you can certian that the Drain-Unscrewers are to blame. I assured him that I had done no such thing, but he was certain my husband had. He replaced the shower drain, and though there was no wetness anywhere near the shower drain and the shower drain was indeed screwed firmly into place he proclaimed the problem fixed.
Now, let me explain about drain unscrewing: I received my first shower drain lecture from a German plumber in 1996. Apparently, if you undo the 5 inch long screw holding the metal screen in the shower drain to get say hair out of the drain the whole pipe system drops away. German plumbers are convinced that all Americans are a race of Drain-Unscrewers. Now, as I let plumbers mess with drains, I don't know if this differs from American drains or not, but I got the message: stay away from the drain screws. In the maintenance briefing I've received upon moving in to each of the 3 apartments/houses I've lived in Germany I have received the same four rules: open the windows for 10 minutes every day to avoid mold, put Special Saltz in the water softener of the dishwasher, recycle properly, and never, ever, ever unscrew the shower drain.
A few weeks later the power went out again. I pulled the outlet myself, saw it was wet, used the hair drier, and called for the plumber. Three months after the first power outage problem, they sent the "Chief", who was, of course, convinced that the Dirty American had struck again and unscrewed the shower drain. We had words. Finally, he checked the shower drain, found it to be un-tampered with, and began investigating in the other bathroom. (You know the one without a shower. That is actually located above the wall that was wet.) They broke out tile, and opened the wall in the bathroom to have a look at the pipes -- it was all dry. This was of course declared to be a Big Job, the plumber needed to go to lunch and the work was rescheduled for the next day.
A side note on Big Jobs . . . Germans have a 30 hour work week. For the most part, they do not work late, do not work overtime, do not work German or American holidays, and never, ever take less than an hour and a half for lunch. Or at least those with a US Government Maintenance contracts. . .
Several months, and 3 plumber trips later they opened up the wall where the wet outlet was located and found a crack in the big, outgoing water pipe. This was of course a Big Job that they repaired on the fourth trip to my house. Boy that was eye opening -- this place has cast iron pipes! Sixty some years later they are all corroding -- little ticking time bombs in our walls. Some weeks and 3 trips from the wall repairs and painters everything was good as newish. In any case, good enough for Government work.
Recently my neighbor and I were discussing her big water issues, and our general frustration with the plumbers. In her case, water came pouring out of the dining room ceiling while her husband was in the shower and she was enjoying her morning coffee. Since she herself is German, the plumbers were convinced that her husband had . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . unscrewed the shower drain! Her husband and the plumber had words. They changed the shower drain, turned on the water and it continued to pour out of the dining room ceiling. Or course, she already had them out several times for an upstairs slow moving sink drain. After several days of being told not to use any water upstairs, and multiple "Big Job" return trips it was discovered that a clog in the pipes had gotten worse, and worse until it finally burst the rusty, corroded, cast iron pipes. The housing office actually tried to charge them for the repair for "causing" the clog.
We decided that anyone who hadn't lived here listening to us talk would think it was the craziest thing on Earth, hence this lengthy post. Gee, aren't you all glad I went for a walk with that particular neighbor.
Oh, and while we're talking about plumbers . . . We have both also had other, more emergent, but less involved plumbing issues that required the serviced of the after duty hours guy. In both cases Mr. Grumpy Pants whom the Army pays a great deal of money to handle after hours issues, accused us of putting up with the emergency running water problem all day, and waiting until 10 pm to call it in. He "could tell." So yes folks, we now confess that we bailed running water that wouldn't shut off ALL DAY LONG just so we could have the privilege of the afterhours guy's sparkling company. Now you know. But hey, at least we didn't unscrew the shower drain.
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