Home made tool

We returned to Houston Saturday afternoon and discovered a number of little "issues" including no dial tone, signs of mice and no water. I began to investigate at the water meter box where the shut off is and sure enough the water had been shut off. Just then my neighor drives up and informs me the city workers shut it off about a week ago. Now this trip for me was a three week stay in Utah, but for Robin it was about a year long stay in Longview and a week in Utah. I traveled to Washington and I had another trip to Utah in there somewhere. So Robin decided it would be better for the smooth operation of the household if she had all the mail forwarded to Longview so she could pay bills and keep things under control. Great idea in theory, but somehow the post office neglected to forward our water bill. Hence the water shut off. I was thinking great, no water until we can get this sorted out Monday.

When we first moved in we didn't know where the main shut off was in the house and we had to have the city come shut off the water for something and I watched as two guys struggled to turn the shutoff. Probably had not been turned since it was installed. It is in a little box in the ground and has a valve that takes a special tool. I've used a crescent wrench in Washington, but the valve wasn't as hard to turn as this one and the box is too small to get any leverage.

Anyway, I was thinking no way am I going to wait until Monday for a shower, so I hustled to Home Depot because they sell the tool to turn the water on. I was skeptical that their tool would do the job as it is made from a three foot section of rebar with a little key welded to the bottom that fits the valve and a handle welded to the top. It looks like a T. Turns out I was right to be skeptical because the handle came off on the first twist and I didn't even have to twist very hard. I tried the old crescent but no way was that going to work. So I went back to the Depot and bought three pieces of one inch black pipe and a t. Back home I used my grinder to cut the slots in one end of the pipe to fit the valve and made a handle with the t and the two shorter peices.

Needless to say we had water all weekend. Robin got the issue straightened out with the city monday. I got the dial tone to work, now if we could just catch that pesky mouse.