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For ages now the outdoor water faucet has been leaking. Just a little, but the rate was accelerating. A year or two ago we had someone out to look at it and they said they weren't willing to replace the faucet because there's no shutoff valve to it except the house's main shutoff, and all our plumbing is 50s-grade galvanized steel. It's not showing any signs of being naughty yet, but they warned the effort to cut off the end and replace the faucet might end up breaking the pipes and require an emergency re-plumbing of the whole house. This was more work than we were willing to do for a garden faucet, so we put it off and wondered how we could tell how far our plumbing is from needing a full-body replacement. (As best we can tell, our pipes are in pretty good shape considering their age and that the house has mostly been owned by people who are optimistic about their home repair skills.)
With the faucet getting worse, though, we had to do something and that was: see what the other plumbers we ever use think. They came on Monday and were much more optimistic about things. They needed to replace the faucet, but were confident they could cut off and replace the end of the garden hose pipe --- and install a shutoff valve for it --- with no more risk than any plumbing job presents. It was not the work of a moment. But it was only an hour or so of the water being off and the plumber making a lot of alarmingly loud noises down there. Cutting, I suppose, maybe drilling into the basement to loosen the pipe leading outside.
And what we have now is a proper shutoff valve down there. And a replacement end of the pipe done in modern materials that will surely have no problems which only become apparent twenty years down the line. Also the new end of the hose points downward a little, so it should naturally drain when we turn the water off and maybe prevent some incidental wintering damage.
Also a side benefit: clearing out space in the basement for the guy to get around allowed for a little bit of consolidation and throwing-out that made the basement more navigable, and that sets us up to do a couple more rounds of tidying-up before we have to make it a major project.
Let's now enjoy a little more of the Jackson County Fair and their bunnies.
From behind the bars a little red-eyed white rabbit wants you to ignore that they have like three separate backsides back there. Some rabbit-taur nonsense, I don't know.
And here's a Californian neatly boxed in but enjoying the sun and air.
Another Californian boxed in where they can judge you.
Californian stretched out curious to see if I knew where their legs went.
And here's another rabbit enjoying their outer-row cage.
Turkey! We got to pet this one's head.
Trivia: Harvard College Observatory hired its first female person as computer in 1875. By 1880 the entire computing staff was made of women. They were paid half what their male predecessors were. Source: Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator, Keith Houston.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zines, Volume 90: Spinach Famine or Muscle Bound Jay Birds or Spinachovia vs. Creamatonia, Bud Sagendorf. Editor Stephanie Noelle.
