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just a caulking problem
Saturday, February 22 2020
Our tenant in the 1L unit of the brick mansion on Downs Street complained on Thursday about more leaking coming into her kitchen from the bathroom upstairs. She even had video showing water flowing at a steady rate from the new translucent pane I'd used to replace her light fixture. It had been such a bad situation that Gretchen had me drop by there on the way to work yesterday, but by then the leaking had stopped. The tenant upstairs had been taking a shower at the time. Based on the amount of water that had come through, it seemed like the problem had to be a failing drain pipe or a bad attachment to the bathtub. So at 3:00pm I arrived at the brick mansion with some demolition tools (including a crowbar and an oscillating cutter). The tenant was still blurry-eyed because she works the night shift as a nurse, but she knew I needed to get all up in there. I removed the transluent panel as well as the adjacent one, which is where the leaks tend to happen. I then used my various tools to tear through the old plaster ceiling to see into the void between the joists directly where the leaks were coming from. There was no plumbing in there at all, just the water-darkened undersides of some floorboards on which the 2nd floor's tube sat. So I went upstairs and just ran cold water into that tub. Nothing happened whatsoever, not even after fifteen minutes. So then I ran the shower, first cold and then hot. Eventually I saw them: water droplets hanging from a crack between floorboards. It would've taken awhile for them to add up to anything, but this was the closest I had ever come to reproducing the mysterious leak. Since no water was coming through the floor near the end of the tub where the plumbing was, this must've just been water that was finding its way through tile. After all this, the problem was apparently just one of caulk failure.
So I drove to Herzog's to get a small tube of caulk. I also visited the nearby Ghettoford to get the things I would need to feed myself in Gretchen's continued absence, particularly bread (but also mushrooms, both fresh and canned, and two different kinds of oat milk).
After putting the ceiling back together in 1L and finger-caulking the entire tile-margin of the 2nd-floor tub, I realized I still hadn't bought the hardware I needed for my weather station. So I drove out to Home Depot, taking the long way home. I arrived there just as the sun was setting over the southern Catskills (the Home Depot and Lowes parking lots have some of the best views in the area). Because all I ended up buying was UV-resistant PVC, I ended up spending less than $7, which might be close to a low record for that place.
Then I realized I needed more beer, something to mix with gin, and a tank of gasoline. So I stopped at the Miron Lane Stewart's. That place has the worst beer selection of all the Stewart'ses I frequent, so I ended up getting a twelver of Modelo. (Their IPA choices were weak; I will never again drink a Redhook Ale Long Hammer IPA.)
With Gretchen away, I've gone back to smoking pot for the past couple evenings (instead of eating it, which generally works better, at least with the pot I have). After cleaning my pipe enough to get solid hits, I actually found smoking pot enjoyable, though it never got me more than a little bit stoned. Eventually the diphenhydramine kicked in and I had to go to bed, but by then it was midnight. Earlier today, just before doing my landlording, I'd taken 150 milligrams of pseudoephedrine, though its effects were tempered by some icecream I'd recently eaten.
Ramona with a pig toy she stole from a neighbor dog. Click to enlarge.
The stone wall as it looked from the south this morning. Click to enlarge.
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