My Plumbing Woes

Yesterday Emma Grace peed in her pants four times and pooped in her pants once. I really thought we were potty trained. Guess not. But those aren’t the plumbing issues I’m referring to…


In the last 24ish hours, the plumber has been to our house four times….for three different issues. Here’s how it all went down:

First of all, our toilet lid/seat broke a few months ago. It took us a while to get to the “home depot” for a replacement, since it’s a 30 minute drive from where we live. We finally got there and bought the wrong shaped seat. Did you know there are only two toilet seat shapes in China? The egg and the circle. We have the egg. We bought the circle. Oops. In the mean time, EG managed to cut her eye on the broken lid while pulling up her pants. Oops. We finally returned the circle and got the egg and all was well in our bathroom. Until the new one broke a week later. Here is where the plumber comes in…I was really frustrated and didn’t know what to do since the home depot was a pretty far drive and the quality of the one we had gotten there was sub par anyway. So for a week or so, we just had a toilet seat with no lid.

Until one day…I was walking through the vegetable/fruit/everything market and noticed a toilet seat and lid hanging on the wall of this little store. The man had both the egg and the circle and I immediately bought the correct one and came home beaming with pride. I felt so proud of myself for solving this problem in such a convenient manner. Sometimes the littlest accomplishments in this country feel more like monumental feats. It seems random for a store in the market to have a toilet seat but what I am realizing is that most anything you need for daily life can be purchased in our little town. It’s the most “convenient inconvenient” town on the planet. I have now made a decision to always search in our town for the things I need before taking the time to go into town to the more “obvious” locations to purchase items.

So…I tucked my “goldmine” find of a plumbing store into my memory for later use. Then last week my pipes under my sink starting leaking. Arghhh. A side note on these pipes-they have broken more than once and last year I spent a lot of time and money searching all over the place for high quality copper pipes that would not fall apart regularly. At one point on my search, I went to a housing market and told the lady I would “like to purchase the high quality kind because the plastic kind that are held together with some 15 cent glue breaks regularly. I am tired of changing these. Do you have the high quality kind?” Her response??? “Oh no, these are something you will replace very often.” Arrgghhh. So my afternoon long search which cost me 20 dollars in cab fees ended in me coming home disheartened, holding a 15 cent tube of glue, all the while coveting my parent’s copper piping.

So…when my pipes broke this time, I knew the standard procedure. You can ether get the glue and repair the leaks or you can just replace the whole thing. I opted for the latter and went on a search for new pipes with Emma Grace. Yesterday we strolled into toilet man’s shop and showed him my pile of gross leaking plastic pipes which I brought with me. He had exactly what I needed and even agreed to come install my new pipes. Perfect. He installed them. I paid him. We were both happy and I put his number in my phone “just in case” I should ever need his services again.

Then this morning, I heard the sound of loud rushing water from the upstairs bathroom. I assumed Andy was shaving or washing his face. After a few minutes it dawned on me that if it was Andy in there, he was pressure washing his face because the water was blasting out. Upon checking I found that a pipe under the bathtub had burst and water was flooding the bathroom. The good thing about China is that they are at least aware of their plumbing issues and are prepared. Our tile floor is slanted and all the water was running into a drain in the floor.

I called my plumber (he’s sold me a toilet seat, fixed my pipes in my kitchen, and his number is in my phone so I think it’s appropriate to call him my plumber now). He didn’t even listen to what I said and immediately said he would come in the afternoon to look at it. I deduced that by “it” he meant the pipes he had fixed yesterday. Of course he thought I was calling about them. I mean they are a bunch of plastic, held together by wire coiled around the plastic at the joints, rather than the normal 15 cent glue. I am not sure which is better, by the way. “No no, my kitchen pipes are fine…it’s my bathtub.” A bathtub which by the way is not even installed. It is literally just sitting in our bathroom, though it’s the kind that should be installed against a wall on three sides. We have rigged up a three sided shower curtain to prevent water getting all over the floor while bathing. He came within 15 minutes and fixed my rusted busted pipes and all was well….

Until I called him again this afternoon to tell him that now the faucet that puts out water for the washing machine wasn’t working. I assumed it had something to do with all the turning off and on of various water knobs during the previous repairs. (by the way, there are a total of 10 buttons, handles, knobs that control the pressure, temperature, and source of our water. Does it really have to be that complicated? Really?) “Oh no” was his response, “I did not touch that faucet.” I said, “Well the rest of the house has water and I can’t figure out why the washing machine doesn’t.” “I’ll be right there." He showed up almost immediately with a new faucet head in hand. Apparently this wise plumber knows that faucet heads are something you “must change very often.” He was right. He took the old one off, put a new one on, and voila! We had water again.


He and I laughed at how many plumbing issues I’d had in 24 hours. He might not be so happy to be my plumber after all! I also thought it was neat how God took care of us…when that toilet seat broke a few months ago I was just annoyed and had no idea that God would use that to introduce me to a plumber IN MY TOWN just when I was going to need one!!!!
Now if I can just help Emma Grace with her leaky pipes, then we’ll really be getting somewhere!