There’s an old joke about plumbers that goes something like
There are three things you need to know to be a plumber:
- Payday is on Friday.
- Hot water is on the left.
- Shit flows downhill.
Fortunately, I have yet to encounter any upward-slanting sewers and nobody has ever paid me to do plumbing. On my recent trip, though, I stayed in two different motel rooms that had the hot and cold reversed in the shower. I see this over and over, in properties simple and fancy. At least in this last one someone had labeled the error, instead of leaving poor guests to discover it on their own. “Brrrrr. Ouch!”
In the dim and distant past, I added a bathroom to my house. I contracted out most of the work because I had a full-time job and, well, I’m lazy. I absolutely could have done the plumbing myself, but I don’t enjoy plumbing and… lazy.
The journeyman plumber, who came well recommended, toiled away for a few days, pronounced the job complete, and left. I went upstairs and turned on the water and discovered that, well, the hot was on the right for both the sink and the bathtub. Really? There are only three rules.
I was pretty sick of dealing with contractors by then, and thought I’d just live with it. That is, until I flushed the toilet and a rich cloud of aromatic steam rose to greet me. Ugh. The plumber did (grudgingly) come back and install some crossover lines to fix the problem, but it was yet another example of hiring a “professional” to do work I would have been better off doing myself.
—2p