Being on lockdown is a great time to have something go wrong in the house. And that is just what happened a couple of weeks ago.
It was time to open up the taps for watering outside. After I opened the shut-off valve for the tap in the garage I headed into the back basement room to get the one for the rear of the house.
As soon as I started twisting the valve stem I knew something was wrong. Water was dripping over my hand. I quickly shut off the valve and the leak stopped.
We don’t use the rear tap all that much but I certainly did not want to have a leaky shut off valve above my rec room ceiling, so I put in a call to Town Mechanical. The next day Matt arrived to put things right.
I was once again reminded of the advantages of small-town life. Matt was friendly, efficient, honest and reliable. He quickly set about fixing my list of small jobs. He replaced a sticky faucet cartridge in the shower. Then he started to repair the bad shut off valve. Watching him at a socially approved COVID-19 distance, I concluded that plumbing professionally was a young man’s game. Matt had to crawl in and out of the tub, solder over his head, and on his final job lie on his back under the kitchen sink and wrestle with a seized up kitchen tap.
That last job was unplanned but we concluded necessary. At first, he thought he could just replace the kitchen tap cartridge to stop a drip. But the tap was worn, and after the cartridge was replaced it would not stay on when you lifted the lever.
Matt didn’t want to pressure us, but he wasn’t happy with the job. He offered to replace the taps for only the cost of the parts – no additional labor charge beyond what he quoted us. We are happy we decided to get a new faucet.
After he took out the old taps, Matt said that he would likely have been back for another call soon if we had kept the old ones.
All in all a great experience. We have used Town Mechanical in the past and we’ll be glad to do so again.
