Pain in the tail stuff, and I’m not making this up. Monday, at bedtime, both the front door and back door dead bolts broke. They had been getting a little wobbly. I got them locked finally. Well, that’s irritating. Naturally, I had to replace all the knobs, locks, dead bolts, and with the correct keys. And the wife had to take a half hour picking the replacements and colors. But, I got it done without too much profanity.

And tonight, as we approach bedtime, the two toilets in the house both have leaking fill valves. Why now? Why both? I tried all I could think of to fix them without having to replace them, but no luck. Off to the hardware store tomorrow. They are supposed to have a use life of 5 to 7 years, and they are way older than that. But why NOW?

Is this a Murphy’s law thing?

I always have things break around the house in 3’s. Get ready for something else.

Yup! The washer quit.

Murphy was an optimist.

Bummer!

Could be worse. Whenever I'm fixing something, half of the time I break 2 or 3 other things in the process. A $10 fix ends up costing $100...

always have a/c and water heater ... dishwasher, washer, dryer, etc. ... my wife says I am a pessimist at times

I should bring this up to date. The problems weren’t just in two’s. It just kept getting worse. It appears that the water well tank air release valve wasn’t releasing air. That put a bunch of air into our plumbing, and the air bubbles drove anything that had settled in those lines straight to the house plumbing. That killed the original toilet fill valves, plugged all sorts of strainers, and caused other problems like shutting down both washing machines. It was a mess. And the defective new fill valves forced me to do another replacement on each toilet. The barn toilet fill valve survived. The water well is fixed and all strainers cleaned. And the shower water control cartridge also had to be replaced. $50 for the tool to replace it.

Who knew that modern washing machines have brains or computers? The barn washer must be easy 20+ years old, so it has no brain. A plugged strainer just caused it to wash with little water. The new machine recognized that water flow was not sufficient, so it just shut down and refused to run.

Anyway, all is well at present…so far.

A friend of mine has that curse. A dang good welder/ fabricator! But don't let him operate a screw driver or a wrench.

That is why I try to never start a serious involved project, particularly plumbing, on a Sunday or holiday. You WILL need a trip to the hardware store, and we all know that one trip isn’t enough. And living out here in the boonies puts me 40 miles from Home Depot if the local hardware is closed. And then the third trip because you broke something.

Any plumbing problem is a minimum 3 trips to the store and back.