Plumbing

I think we might need to start looking for a new plumber.

Let it be known that we are an equal opportunity employer.

As long as the price is right.

Since John's family has lived in this area...forever, we have had the good fortune of being able to use "family" home maintenance people since the beginning of our marriage.

It is now to the point that the family plumber is apparently not capable of meeting 100% of our plumbing needs. The difficult part of crossing this plumber's name off our list and searching for a new plumber is:

1. This plumber is virtually never busy and can usually come the same day we call in a problem.

2. He is relatively cheap...for a plumber. (This should, in fact, be reason number one.)

3. Since the plumber is getting up in years, as is our house, he seems knowledgable enough about resolving the plumbing issues we seem to run into. (Plus, he has the whole plumber's pants, "don't-watch-when-he-bends-over-to-fix-something" look going on. That must mean he's legitimate, right?)

So, what's the problem? Well, when I called him earlier in the week to come fix a leaking water spigot on the outside of our house he warned me that he has a bad knee and cannot crawl under our house to fix anything.

OK. I have little to no plumbing knowledge and could not figure out why he would need to get under the house to fix a leaking spigot. Hoping that this would not be necessary, I told him that he had fixed a similar problem several years earlier and I did not remember him crawling under our house to do so.

I was right. The plumber arrived and fixed the leak within half an hour, never even setting foot inside (or under) our house.

But what if the next problem requires accessing pipes under the house? We will be scrambling around to find a decent plumber at the last minute. Or we will end up paying a fortune to get the issue resolved quickly. If you know us at all, you can assume that the latter option would only happen if the house was flooding or floating away due to an extreme disaster. Yes, we are the people in the commercial who are standing in their living room, up to their ankles in water, as a waterfall issues from the ceiling, telling the plumber that his quote is too high and we'll just keep looking for someone cheaper.

Unfortunately, as John points out, our current plumber will never retire. (If he was going to retire, he probably would have done it about ten years ago.) So, we could potientially keep this man on the list and see what his physical state allows him to repair at the time of our need.

The fact remains that at some point, with a house as old as ours, we will need an able-bodied plumber. Preferably one who comes cheap.

Our conclusion: we need to start interviewing for a back-up plumber. Requirements: readily available and cheap.

Oh, and it would be nice if your pants fit.