A New Tool In My Plumbing Toolbag

This past Tuesday morning I had just finished shaving. I pushed down on the nob-and-rod (my super technical term) to raise the plug to release the water in the sink. I did not hear the normal water-gurgling and slurping sound of a sink-full of water going down the drain pipe. Instead I heard the sound of water splashing onto the bottom of the bathroom cabinet.

NOT a good thing! I immediately pulled on the nob-and-rod to stop the draining of the sink and opened the door to reveal the inside of the cabinet. Sure enough, everything was soaked. About six rolls of toilet paper had to be thrown away. I used the trash can to catch the rest of the water so that I could drain the sink and then turned off the water to the faucets - I did not have time to investigate as I had to shower and dress for work.

That evening I came home and gave things a closer look to see if something had become loose. It turns out that the plastic drain pipe had sheared off where it met the sink - no amount of twisting was going to fix that. So, after the kids were in bed, off I went to Lowes, where I procured the replacement parts, this time in metal (don't want this to happen again).

Due to the way the pipes are under the sink, I had to cut off a couple of inches from the end of the new tail piece. I don't know if was due to the stress of being cut or was a manufacturer's defect, but once I got the new parts installed and tested, I discovered a leak. The leak was not any any of the connections I made, but where the tail piece entered the pipe body through which the plug lever enters (anyone have a more technical name for this?) - i.e. that's the way it came of of the box.

I couldn't believe it. Well, that was it for that evening. Since I had sawed off a portion of the tail piece, I couldn't return it. As I saw it, I had three options:

1. Call a plumber: That would be expensive.
2. Buy a new part and try again: That would be less expensive than a plumber but I hated the idea of having to buy another brand new part, with no guarantee that it would not leak too. I would also have to take everything apart and install it.
3. Fix the leak: In my mind, on this night, that was taking off the part, cleaning off all of the pipe dope and plumber's putty on it and trying to solder the joint so that it wouldn't leak. The problem with that option is, again, I would have to take everything apart, solder it, install it again, just so I can test it.

I slept on these three options, and came up with option 3B. What if I could fix the leak without the fire and heat of soldering, which would mean that I could fix it in place. I started running through my mind all the things I new of that could be used fix it, such as super glue, plumber's putty, and epoxy.

I settled on epoxy. Something like JB Weld aught to do it. While at work, I did some on line research at Lowes and Home Depot, to find something I could pick up on my way to work. That's when I made the discovering that there was such a thing as plumbing epoxy.

On my way home, I dropped by the Lowes' plumbing section and picked up a tube of Oatey's FIX-it STICK, all purpose bonding putty (epoxy). Here's the three bullet points on the outside packaging:

• Plugs & Seals Leaks
• Mixes In Your Hand
• Hardens Like Steel In Minutes

Sounded like just what I needed. And it was. In the tube is a stick of epoxy resin and hardener, one wrapped around the other. You break of the amount you need and mash it together until it is a consistent color (reminded me of the stick of gum in Mission Impossible, just not with explosive properties) and then have about three minutes to put it in place. I pressed the putty around the joint, making sure all sides were thuroughly covered. The instructions say that it will be fully set in 15-20 minutes. I went ahead and waited half an hour. Then I gave it a test - success! No leaks. Problem solved. And the putty was indeed very hard, though I cannot say if it was as hard as steel or not.

I wish I had know about this product several years ago. I can think of at least two plumbing projects that would have been a lot easier if I could have used the FIX-it STICK rather than the Replace-the PIPES option. This definitely goes into my plumbing toolbag.

Besides what I used this bonding putty for, the instructions inside the tube has a list of other uses:

• Sealing leaks in sink traps, pipe joints (I know that), hot water tanks, damaged water pipes, bathroom fixtures.
• Seals leaking downspouts.
• Stops leaks in gas tanks and oil pans.
• Fills rust holes and dents in autos.
• Repairs fiberglass or wood hulls.
• Attaches auto and boat trim for good (means you have to break the trim to get it off).
• Mending toys, furniture, broken handles and resetting bathroom tiles.
• Stopping leaks in oil and water tanks, air conditioning coils, air ducts.
• Patch floors, walls and castings.
• Restoring stripped threads.
• Thread locks.
• Attaching machine tags.
• Anchoring rods, bolts, screws, machines.
• Filleting compound.
• Part fabrication.

Quite amazing stuff. I like the last one. Anyone want to build an engine? I've included some pictures below. I apologize for the fuzziness. The camera had a hard time focusing.

My new tool in my fight against pipe deterioration.
Small print reads: All purpose bonding putty


The epoxy putty is that grey ring in the middle of the silver pipe.


A closer view of the sealed joint.
It ain't never gonna leak there again.

Kingdom Koolness

This is just a small but neat thing to share, about how God works in little ways.

As part of our bedtime routine, we read the Bible together as a family (except for Ellie because she's not quite old enough to sit still through the reading). We have chosen to read straight from the actual Bible rather than a children's Bible. We are currently working our way through the gospel of Mark and should be done fairly soon.

Stephanie and I decided that we wanted our kids to be involved in worship services with the adults at an early age, rather than having them in children's church. So, when one of the children turns three, that means they start to stay in with us during the worship portion of the service and then go to children's church. When they turn five, then they start to stay in through the whole service with us. This means that Will now stays in the service with us and listens to the sermon.

Well, today our pastor mentioned that he would be finishing our current series in 1 John next week and that next series, to be given by another man in the church, would be about the life of Jesus, in the gospel of Mark! How cool is that?!

God has worked it out so that we as a family will have read over the material that will be covered on Sunday mornings, giving Will a foundation upon which the sermons can build upon. Isn't God awesome?

Second Annual Backyard Camping

On Friday, the boys and I had our second annual backyard camp. Here's the link for the first annual backyard camp. After I arrived home and changed clothes, we proceeded to set up the tent. Since the tent we have is a small two-person tent and was cramped last year, I borrowed a larger tent from some friends.

After supper, we lit a small fire in an old charcoal grill we have. We brought out the marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate bars, and fixed ourselves some good s'mores. The boys played with flash lights for a bit and gathered sticks to throw onto the fire. Then it was into the house to brush teeth, put on pajamas, go potty and read the Bible.

Since we were only camping in the backyard, as a special treat for the boys, I ran an extension cord out to the tent and we watched one of the boys' videos on the laptop. Once the video was done, so were we. We all snuggled into our sleeping bags. For the boys I had brought out a large seat cushion each to sleep on. I slept on two thin camping pads. That was more than I had last year, but still was not that comfortable. If we start doing this a lot, I may have to look into either an air mattress or a camping cot. Anyway, we slept away the night, undisturbed by any night critters, unlike last year.

Around seven a.m., Ben wakes up, sits up and declares, "It's morning." I told him yes, it was, but that it was not time to get up yet - it had gotten quite cool (around 40) during the night and I was all snugged in my sleeping bag. That lasted about thirty minutes until Will declared that he had to pee, at which time we donned our sweatshirts and shoes, and headed indoors.

The boys really had a good time and so did I, despite the few aches I came away with :-).

Setting up the tent.


Will, Ben and Ellie in front of the tent.


Around the camp fire.


Will in his sleeping bag.


Ben in his sleeping bag.

Here's a link to the post my wife did on the camp out.

Quote of the Day, 09/23/2008

I'm laying in my bed this afternoon, taking a nap, half in and out of consciousness. I hear Ben open the door of his room and go into the bathroom. The sound of tinkling reaches my ears, followed by a declaration from Ben,

"That's a lot of bubbles."

"The Knowledge of the Holy"

This is a book review on The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer.

Synopsis: A.W. Tozer presents the attributes of God in a concise and easy to understand way. He starts off by laying the foundation as to why we, as Christians, should seek to truly know who God is. He then proceeds to discuss each attribute.

Review: This is an excellent book! I highly recommend it and strongly think every Christian should have a copy. It's not a long book, only 117 pages, so Tozer moves quickly through each attribute. That does not mean it is necessarily a quick read though. I had to digest each chapter and sometime re-read a section to try and really understand the truths being taught.

If you don't have a copy of this book, go out and borrow or buy it today. This is a keeper for my library and one I will re-read many times I'm sure.

"Out of Islam"

This is a review on the book, Out of Islam by Christopher Alam, which I stated I would do last November. I've tried to do this two or three times, but have gotten into too much detail each time. I have to keep in mind that I'm doing a book review and not a book report. Hopefully, using a section title of "Synopsis" will help keep me focused.

Synopsis: This is an autobiographical book about Christopher's upbringing in a strict Islamic family in Pakistan. How belief in Allah, who never answered any of his prayers and abuse by his father and step-mother led him to the point that his greatest desire was to die. It was at this point he heard the gospel and became a Christian. Through persecutions and trials, fleeing Pakistan and being granted asylum in Sweden, he learned to trust in God, the God who answers. He went to Bible school and got married. He began to get involved in ministry. Christopher also began to question why he did not see the power (i.e. the miracles) in the present day that was depicted in the New Testament. He got involved with Kenneth Hagin, went to the USA to study at Hagin's school and now holds gospel crusades around the world, in which baptism of the Spirit occurs, healing and other such miracles.

Review: First of all, let me start off saying that when I picked this book up in our one local Christian book store, I thought it was the story of another Muslim turned Christian, Daniel Shayesteh, that I had seen advertised in my Answers in Genesis magazine. I was disappointed to figure out that it was not.

I was very involved in the story, reading how God changed this man's life so completely and met all of his needs, only to read that he got involved with Kenneth Hagin and the Word of Faith movement. That sent up red flags and produced disappointment. I don't want to get into a whole theological debate here, but from everything I've heard and read on Kenneth Hagin and the Word of Faith movement, they don't line up with the whole counsel of Scripture. I've provided links at the bottom if you want to do some more reading on your own.

Christopher Alam has made some excellent observations about Christianity and life that I agree with. It's hard to deny someone's stated experience, but things like the quote below (from page 160 and 161) certainly give me reason to ask, "Is this really from God, and am I just uncomfortable with this because it is out of the realm of my personal experience as a Christian?"

I stripped off my jacket and tossed it into the crowd. "The power of God is upon my jacket," I shouted.
The healing virtue of the Lord Jesus was so powerful upon my jacket as it was being passed around through the crowd that people were being healed the instant they touched the jacket.

There are Biblical, New Testament examples where clothing was involved in healings, but this has a sensationalism ring to it, that makes it suspect in my mind. Anyway, that's just my opinion.

The book is a pretty good read, if you know what to expect. It will never be a favorite and definitely not one I will read over and over again.

Links:

• Wikipedia entry on Kenneth Hagin.
  
• Forgotten Word Ministries on Kenneth Hagin.
• Christian Research Institute on Word of Faith, Part 1 and Part 2.
• Some call the Word of Faith movement the prosperity gospel. Joel Osteen is one of the most visible leaders of this movement today.
• Listen to John Piper's rebuff to the prosperity gospel.
  

She's Two!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ELISABETH!!!

Update 08/15/08

I'm just going to go for it, bullet style.

• Have you seen the latest on the Bigfoot front?
• Two weekends ago, we went to the Mystic Aquarium. Here's a link to the post my wife did about it. We had a very enjoyable time.
• This week has been a crazy, fast paced week. Lots of things going on and added to that, my manager is on vacation this week, so I'm covering for her. I'm glad it's Friday.
• During the summer, our local library has family nights on Tuesday. That's when they have some sort of activity or presentation for the kids, and their parents, to come to. We recently participated in two of them. The first was a presentation by a bee keeper. He had part of hive with one of the frames that had some of the bees wax on it showing the honeycomb structure. He also had a small jar of honey he had collected that day for us to sample. The boys thought it was better than the store bought honey. The second activity was a reptile show. A guy who raises and entertains with reptiles for a living came and talked to the kids about several different kinds of reptiles. He was very good. He taught them facts and allowed the kids to touch and interact with the reptiles.
  
• Sunday I gave Stephanie a break and took the kids on a bike ride. The boys each rode their little bikes (with training wheels) and wore their helmets and I hitched up the bike trailer to cart Ellie around. I also wore my helmet (teach by example). The boys did great at obeying me, which kept the stress level low. In our ride we hit two parks, with play time at each, and stopped to look at a large dump truck and front loader. We all had a good time, including Stephanie.
• I purchased new tires for my truck. It'll be nice to have some better traction this winter.
• My manager, since she was going away on vacation, decided that my work pager was an inadequate way for my senior manager to get a hold of me. So now I'm a not-so-thrilled possessor of a cell phone for my work. I doubt I'm the first one to use this phrase, but I call it my "electronic leash". Though, the plan it's on includes unlimited nights and weekends and unlimited calls to other Verizon users, so some of my friends to whom I have not talked to in a long while may be getting calls from me. Then again, maybe not. I'm not a big conversationalist, despite the fact that my sometimes lengthy posts may indicate the opposite.
• Last night I helped the kids put together a train track for our Thomas the Tank Engine wooden railway. Stephanie says they spent a good while this morning playing with it.
• I'm reading Mary Poppins to Will. Neither of the other kids seem interested. Will has really gotten into chapter books lately, which is great.
• On Wednesday, we went as a family to our local zoo for a members' night. Though it was only a couple of hours, we had a good time and had free freezer pops. These were not the best freezer pops but the kids loved them and had stained skin and clothes to prove it.
• Tonight, the boys wanted to wrestle, which means they climb all over me, then I wrap them up and tickle them. I offered to read to them but no, it had to be wrestling. It ended up being dress up wrestling. Will put on a hard hat and one of those fake big-nose-mustache-bushy-eyebrow-glasses disguises. Ben put on a fireman's hat, gloves, eye patch and a fireman's backpack (looks like the oxygen tanks but you really fill it with water and squirt it out though the attached hose and handle). Ellie wore an eye patch. Will gave me a hard hat to wear. So attired, we wrestled.
  

That's it. I'm coming up dry.

This One's For The Birds!

Turkeys
Yesterday, Saturday, during nap time, I happened to look out the front window of the living room and what did I see? A flock of turkeys walking past! We've seen wild turkeys in other areas of the state but never in our neighborhood. We've had quite an assortment of wild life in the five plus years we've lived here: an opossum (found dead in the back yard), skunks (including the one that ambled by our camp), rabbits, squirrels and now turkeys. Too bad it wasn't closer to Thanksgiving...

Birdhouse
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to build a birdhouse with the kids. Of course, having kids as young as mine, the "with" part is used very loosely. I did the building and they watched. I used some left over wood and pulled the plans out of my head - I definitely have some lessons learned for the next time :-).

Even though they did not really help with the actual construction, they did assist with the painting. Again, we used what was available. The only things that were purchased for the project were some small eye hooks used in the hanging of the birdhouse and some extra staples for my heavy duty stapler. We painted the birdhouse white with some left over primer. Then we used some acrylic paint we had to add color. Ellie helped a little with the painting before getting bored but the boys really enjoyed it.

While letting the last of the paint dry, I took out a couple of ladders and surveyed our lone tree in the back yard for a good place to hang the birdhouse. It turned out there was only really one branch that was suitable, once some dead branches were removed. Once I was finished with the ladders, the kids, of course, proceeded to play on them :-).

I did the front.


Ben did this side.


Will did this side.


I did the back too. Had trouble "writing" with a paint brush.


From the top.


The new birdhouse is ready for a family.


Up close.


Far away.


Ben showing no fear on the ladder (You cannot see it for Ben, but I've tied the ladder to the tree so it will not fall).


Will would appreciate it if I stopped taking his picture.


Ellie getting in on the climbing action. My three monkeys.

Da Plane! Da Plane! Da Hole In Da Plane!

**** WARNING! ****
If you live in fear of flying on airplanes, then DO NOT read any more of this post!
STOP RIGHT NOW!

Ok, now that I've given fair warning and feel that I've absolved myself of any psychological trauma this post may cause to my readers, we can proceed.

Today I read a news article about a Quantas jet flying from London to Melbourne which developed a gaping hole mid flight. The end result is that the plane was able to land safely in Manila and no one was hurt. It does not even appear that any luggage was lost.

This is quite a scary story to read about, if you have any empathy for the passengers on board the plane. While I love to fly and it does not scare me in the least, there's a statement in the article that even I find scary and a little bit disturbing. Below I have pasted the portion of the article that includes the statement I find disturbing, which I have highlighted. I'm including some of the story before and after the statement to give it context.

Investigators appeared to be focusing on a structural problem.

"From the pictures that we've seen out of Manila during the course of the day, it would seem that one of the panels to the outer skin of the aircraft has literally come away from the rest of the fuselage," Chris Yates, an aviation expert at Jane's Aviation, told The Associated Press.

"As a consequence of this, the aircraft experienced rapid decompression," he said.

While it is not uncommon for metal panels to be lost from aircraft in flight, he said: "It's relatively rare that when a bit falls off the airplane it causes the sort of instance that we saw in relation to Qantas. In other words that it causes the aircraft cabin to depressurize."

Yates said investigators will examine closely the fracture points that showed up on the skin of the aircraft to determine whether metal fatigue or manufacturing defect caused the panel to peel away.

Say WHAT?! What do you mean that "it is not uncommon for metal panels to be lost from aircraft in flight"? That's a disturbing and scary statement. Notice how casually he says "when a bit falls off the airplane". Like it's not a big deal! I live near an airport. Does that mean I should be concerned that some big sheet of metal may come crashing down on my house or my family? Maybe all those who are afraid to fly have the right idea, this makes it sound like airplanes are a flying death trap.

Is there some conspiracy to cover this up and Yates accidentally let it slip? After all, I don't often hear of stories where the metal panels from airplanes fall off. You would think that passengers waiting to get on the planes would notice when the plane pulled up to the terminal. I don't know about you, but if the plane I'm supposed to get on pulls up with a metal sheet missing, I'm not getting on it, even if it is not uncommon and usually does not cause a problem. 'Nuf said.

What are your thoughts on this? Am I reading too much into this statement? Did I misread it?