Saturday, February 05, 2011
Why a one-hour job takes half a day
My brother once told me that to properly estimate how long a job is going to take, multiply by two and use the next greater time unit. For example, a one-hour job (multiplied by two, then increased to next time unit -- hours to days) will take two days. I've found that is often a bit of an overestimation, but not by much. Sometimes just increasing to the next time unit is enough. My wife asked me this morning how long it would take to replace the faucet in the downstairs bathroom (forgot to take a before picture, but this is a close approximation).
I explained that in a perfect world it could take an hour, but it would probably take two days. She wondered why.
It all starts with an assumption that the valves that cut the water off to the faucet actually work. If they don't, then you have to replace them. (This picture is the replaced valves.)
And, of course, one wouldn't turn off all the way, and the other one, once turned off, wouldn't turn back on! Thus began the trip to Home Depot for two new 1/4 turn angle stop valves (the multi-turn valves aren't worth the money -- don't buy them). And, once you start to the store, other errands get tacked on, so an hour or two later we were back home. Getting the water turned off to the house wasn't hard (thankfully), and sweating the old valves off went fairly quickly. But, sweating the new fittings on... water kept weeping down the pipe into the hot water side as I was sweating it on, and so it ended up with a cold joint and a tiny leak. Turn the water back off, sweat the valve off, start over again. Second time and it worked! I'll call that victory. Then I learned that there isn't enough room in a pedestal sink to take the old drain out, so I had to remove the sink from the wall. I've learned by now that trying to remove the old drain by hand is a waste of time, so I just used a sawsall and whacked it off. Well, this could go on for a while, but after removing the sink, reinstalling sink, fixing a leak in the supply line, then removing the pedestal from under the sink to fix a leak at the base of the sink, etc., I finally finished up the job about six or eight hours after starting it. But, it is now done, and it looks much better.
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I explained that in a perfect world it could take an hour, but it would probably take two days. She wondered why.
It all starts with an assumption that the valves that cut the water off to the faucet actually work. If they don't, then you have to replace them. (This picture is the replaced valves.)
And, of course, one wouldn't turn off all the way, and the other one, once turned off, wouldn't turn back on! Thus began the trip to Home Depot for two new 1/4 turn angle stop valves (the multi-turn valves aren't worth the money -- don't buy them). And, once you start to the store, other errands get tacked on, so an hour or two later we were back home. Getting the water turned off to the house wasn't hard (thankfully), and sweating the old valves off went fairly quickly. But, sweating the new fittings on... water kept weeping down the pipe into the hot water side as I was sweating it on, and so it ended up with a cold joint and a tiny leak. Turn the water back off, sweat the valve off, start over again. Second time and it worked! I'll call that victory. Then I learned that there isn't enough room in a pedestal sink to take the old drain out, so I had to remove the sink from the wall. I've learned by now that trying to remove the old drain by hand is a waste of time, so I just used a sawsall and whacked it off. Well, this could go on for a while, but after removing the sink, reinstalling sink, fixing a leak in the supply line, then removing the pedestal from under the sink to fix a leak at the base of the sink, etc., I finally finished up the job about six or eight hours after starting it. But, it is now done, and it looks much better.
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