A "Quick" Plumbing Fix...

Ever since we moved into our house, we’ve had issues with the plumbing to the upstairs toilet. The toilet and the shutoff valve both leaked constantly. After 4 trips to our house by a plumber everything was up and running with minimal leakage. A week later the brand new sprayer/bidet he installed began to leak and by the next day the hose was completely severed and spraying everywhere! Thankfully he installed a new shutoff valve so we could turn the water off, but that meant we couldn’t use the toilet.

After our language session that day I decided to go pick up a cap to stop the water that would go to the sprayer so we could still use the toilet. I stopped at 3 hardware stores in our neighborhood and none of them had a cap or any plumbing supplies for a 3/8in pipe.

The next day I left to find a proper hardware store in our nearest town. I hopped on a jeepney (the cheapest and slowest form of public transportation) and was in town about 35 minutes later. I looked around for a while and couldn’t find a cap for any size pipe so I asked a worker for some help. He started grabbing all kinds of different parts to make a cap. At one point, he had at least 5 pieces that ranged in size from 3/8 up to an inch and back down so that they could put a plug in the whole assembly to cap off my pipe. Even that was not going to work as the 3/8 piece was male and I needed a female piece. He then grabbed a coworker to figure it out. The other guy found a valve kit with a 3/8 to ½ female adapter in it and they were able to put 3 pieces together that would act as a cap.  I hopped on an air-conditioned bus (the most expensive, but also fastest way to travel) and was back home in less than 15 minutes.

The shutoff valve and 3/8 to 1/2 adapter,
the only one in the entire store

The 3 pieces to do the job of one, after
over a hour spent in the store.

I put the three pieces together and installed the valve. Lo and behold, it leaked like the Titanic! I’m not an experienced plumber and hadn’t put enough Teflon tape on the threads. I took it apart and re-taped it. After about 4 hours of work spread over 2 days (not counting what the plumber did), we finally had a functional bathroom again. There’s no one stop-shopping trip to a Menard's or Lowe's here to get what you need, and even the simplest of projects often are not that simple. As they say, “It’s more fun in the Philippines!”

Finished Product