Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Pipes

A few weeks ago, while a friend and I were repotting some plants for the sale, the pipe closest to the door burst unexpectedly. As far as we know, no one tampered with it, and up to that point it had shown no signs of being unsecured or loosened. Anyways, as you can imagine, water went everywhere and the greenhouse began to flood a bit.
The 'geyser' was visible from outside
I attempted to cap the pipe with the old faucet twice, only to get soaked each time. Eventually we called UH Plant Ops and they sent a plumber to try to fix it. While the plumber called for some additional help, he and I devised a temporary solution.

A bucket was placed over the busted pipe, and the stool was placed on top of the bucket to hold it down against the force of the water. Because it was unstable, we added the dolly to keep the stool in place and the water directed downward as the Plant Ops workers looked for the shutoff valve for the greenhouse water. Unfortunately, they couldn't find the valve and ended up getting wet as they fixed the busted pipe by replacing the old, weakened pipe with a new one and stronger glue.



So, the faucet is now working fine again and it is no longer leaking as well! That should be the end of the mold and algae growing around the pipe. We'd like to extend a big thanks to UH Plant Ops, since they fixed our pipe free of charge and worked well into the night doing so.

3 comments:

  1. That must've been terrifying. FYI, the valve is somewhere inside the old science building (I think?).

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  2. Wow! Go Plant Ops!
    So glad that we finally have a fix to the leak, although I'm very sorry that it happened this way... Thanks for battling the water to keep the greenhouse safe!

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