Brer Geezer and the Tar Baby

You all probably want to skip this post. It’s just me whining and trying to get sympathy.

Most of you are probably familiar with the Uncle Remus story about Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Here’s the Wikipedia entry.

Tar-Baby was a doll made of tar and turpentine, used to entrap Br’er Rabbit in the second of the Uncle Remus stories. The more that Br’er Rabbit fought the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he became. In contemporary usage a tar baby refers to any “sticky situation” that is only aggravated by efforts to solve it.

Many of you know that even though I’m Retired, I still do Sprinkler Repairs for extra money to buy Video Games Food. Every now and then, I come across a situation that gets worse, the more I try to fix it. Mrs. Geezer and I call these jobs, Tar Babys. Sometimes, through no fault of the client, the Sprinkler System is so old or poorly designed that it just wants to fall apart. Being the conscientious person that I am, I try not to charge extra when something goes to shit wrong.

Update: I added 3 photos.

One of my regular clients is a nice lady who has about 5 acres. She first called me, about 6 months ago, because one of her valves was leaking and filling up the green box. To make a long story short, I replaced that valve and the other two started leaking. The guys at the Sprinkler Supply place told me that it was because whoever installed it, tightened the fittings too tight. I replaced both of the other valves and it was a lot more expensive than I originally planned. You can see the water squirting out of the cracked valve.

One problem with her system is that the PVC glue they used initially is not holding. Any little shock to the system will cause the pipes to come apart enough to leak.

Last week she called me again with another leak. I dug it up and could see that the pipe was not inserted straight into the coupling. You can see it in the picture.

(No earthworms were harmed in the fixing of this pipe).

When I cut the piece to fix it, I discovered that it was only inserted about 1/4″. Do you see any Primer? No wonder it leaked.

 

Keep in mind that all the time I’m working on this, I am kneeling in a carpet of Goat Head Stickers and mud. In the interest of completeness, I’ve added 3 photos. Might as well get our money’s worth out of Michael’s thoughtful Storage Fee donation.

Here’s the horse pasture, you can see the carpet of goat heads which grew where the water was leaking.

Here’s a Goat Head sticker bush. You may not see my leg because I have Camo pants on.

Here’s the goat head caltrops. They will take out small tires easily.

After gluing in another piece of PVC, I tried to figure out which direction the water was flowing. She told me that there used to be sprinklers out in the horse pasture but they had been capped off.

Cool, I’ll just cap off that part of the line and problem solved. That’s what I did but the next day when I came back to turn on the water, I discovered that I capped off the wrong line. Note to Self: Don’t Assume Nothing.

You know what you get when you make an Assumption?

Here’s Samuel L. Jackson to tell you. NSFW.

Since I realized I had to replace the line that I capped, I decided to use Black Poly pipe because it would bend a little and line up better. As I was pushing the Poly onto the T-fitting, another piece of pipe came loose from the nearest elbow. Arrrrgh, Tar Baby!

See the gap?

I got it primered, glued and put back together. Tomorrow I’ll go back and see if it leaks.

I only charged her for 1.5 hours. I’ve been there about 5 hours altogether.

I need a Hug.