Water Burst, Closing for a Day, Fixing it.

Good morning, happy Friday. It’s country music Friday here at the cafe. I’m drinking a giant water bottle, a shaken espresso, and a little bit of drip coffee. I’m listening to jam-rock country man Jesse Redwing’s song “Monkey Man.” ‘Lotta energy, mid day, let’s write. This week it’s a story about our water system breaking. How we handled it, what I did to fix it, what we lost in the process.

Three Thursdays ago our water broke, more specifically the top piece of our water filtration system cracked open and started leaking water from the top; Which was a hell of a thing to figure out, since it’s basically mounted to the ceiling and everything was just wet haha.

This cheap, all in one “whole house” filter system (consisting of a mount, two filter cases, two filters (carbon for taste and sediment for hardness), and the surrounding pipe work) was mounted above the shelf that held our water heater, which is the one spot in the cafe we probably check the least because it’s 8 feet in the air and behind a giant tank. 

So as it started to drip a little bit each day, from the top, the whole shelf got wet. It was hard to tell where the leak was coming from exactly, but once it started to drip down below the shelf we noticed the small puddle and got up there. I started by buying some new filter casings and gaskets to make sure we had a good seal, but I couldn’t seem to seal it enough to keep the thing dry. As I cranked it tight I was ripping the whole system off the wall. 

I contacted the filter company and they didn’t try to troubleshoot, they just sent over a whole new system (with 20% off it was like $60. I’d now spent maybe $100). At this point it was leaking about a qt a day so I was happy just to be done with it, but when I got up there to start removing the old system I realized it was basically all glued together. 

So on a Wednesday, I wait until we’re closed and turn the water off. If I could loosen the glue then I could get this system apart without destroying it. After a lot of twisting and pulling I realize this hunk of parts is absolutely fused to itself haha. So I pull it away from the wall and twist the entire thing loose at once. Then put in the new system the same way, except it didn’t go on tight. 

Turns out, the entrance and exit threads needed to be twisted in opposite directions. So by tightening one side, it loosened the other. Using the center screw of the two filters, I managed to get all three connections semi-tight then glue them together. Here’s a photo, spoiler: it did not work and I promise I will learn my lesson by the end of this haha. 

I let the glue dry and hope that by the next morning all is well. I come in to open, turn it on, and it’s just shooting water everywhere. I have 45 minutes until we open, so I go to Walmart and buy some more expensive flex glue, and plumbers tape. Go back to the cafe, and put both on. I give it 30 minutes, turn it on again, and it’s still shooting water everywhere. I go home to print a door sign that says we’ll be back Friday, trusting this will all work out.

We have to close

I have tanks full of hot water from the day before, so I brew some drip coffee and set out some cold brew. I decided to give out free coffee for an hour or until we were out of water. My employee Amanda comes in at 8 and helps out for 30min or so. Just to let people know what’s going on and get them some coffee if they need it.

A couple people really appreciated it, and told me they were out of coffee at home or whatever. It was worth the effort. Whenever stuff is rough, you’re slow, etc. My philosophy is to double down on kindness whatever that looks like. Gather some karma live in the moment don’t stress. 

So at 8:45 or so we shut back down and flipped the lights, time to get back to work. 

I turn the water off, run it out of the lines, take a jigsaw and an extension cord, hold it sideways above my head, and cut the pvc apart around the water system. Top 5 most dangerous things I’d done in here, but anything to not buy another power tool. (I learned later about easy pvc cutters).

So now I got to the hardware store and buy new cpvc, cpvc glue, and copper connections to screw into the old system. This is how it was assembled before, so I buy the same parts. I put this together and it explodes off the wall shooting water everywhere, I learn that you can’t really glue copper to cpvc chemically. I’m looking at forum posts from like 2006 where these plumbers are talking about how you should never do this, or at least that it’s not to code for a reason. Alright, fair enough.

I’m soaking wet, people are occasionally stopping by to read the note on the door and wave hi. I’m responding on instagram to people asking if we’re okay. People are sharing the post and asking others to come visit soon to help cover the closing costs. We had an all staff meeting at 4pm and it went really well, the water issues didn’t really come up and summer ideas were flowing. Back to work on the pipes.

I look on youtube and find that the current standard for cpvc to copper is something called a “sharkbite” or push to connect fitting that clamps down with metal teeth. Easy right?  You just push in the copper on one side, and the cpvc on the other. Well I take it all down again, and connect the two materials with a sharkbite, then put it back up there. Since I had to dry some more cpvc glue I painted our baseboards white and resealed them with caulk. Good excuse, they look great. Let’s turn the water back on.

I turn the water on, and it’s leaking about as bad as it was last week. So hey, we can open tomorrow. I put some more glue and tape all over it, then go eat dinner, come back, turn it on again. It’s still leaking slightly worse. What’s this glue and tape even good for? Oh well. It’s like 10pm and I’ve been up since 5am. More glue, bedtime.

We’re open, we’re leaking.

Friday morning is here, and I’m supposed to be off work. I come in at open anyways to babysit the plumbing and make sure nothing explodes. It’s leaking about a gallon an hour, so I’m replacing the 4qt container under the pipes and sitting around. My baristas are incredible rays of sunshine and I am a zombie but happy we’re open! 

It’s now too busy, I work the closing shift and after locking up call my friend over who has more experience with plumbing. We take the system down again and he tries to tighten the semi-tight pieces. but cracks the top part open, which funnily enough was the issue we had before with the first system. He sighs and we look online for a third system. It seems like there’s nothing in stock locally so we head to lowes anyways to see what we can find, I mean we’re in FL the water is hard there’s going to be something right?

Lowes has a small selection of home water filter hardware so we pick out casings, filters, and cpvc fittings in roughly the same size we had before. This time we go fully cpvc to avoid the sharkbite. He says there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to just use all cpvc, and this time the female threading of our water filter systems are metal so they shouldn’t crack open, nice. 

We head back to the cafe and it’s dark out, he shows me that plumbing tape is actually meant to line the threading of the male piece of pipe, so it’s got a tight fit and acts sort of like a gasket. We glue it all together again, and go get ice cream with my fiance. It’s like 9pm on a Friday and the place is slammed. We sit outside on a bench and try not to talk about the water system. “What is butter brickle? Apparently a type of candy bar, that is also a popular ice cream flavor.”

It’s closing up, so back to the cafe, we turn the water on, and nothing happens. It’s air tight. Amazing. We did it.

We’re good, but at what cost?

Well I mentioned before that the new filters, gaskets, and system cost about $100. We maybe spent another $100 on parts the next day, and had to close for a day. We may have lost $400 in potential gross revenue. That’s $600. If 25% of those sales were saved material costs, and we would have spent $70 on labor, we did save $170. Not including my own personal labor haha. So that’s 430 sunk total. That’s more than I spend on groceries in a month at home, but it’s not the end of the world. 

What I really hate is closing up shop! On short notice!  When I’m googling a restaurant, I always see one star reviews on places being closed. Maybe the food truck was rained out or the mom and pop shop was closed on christmas, doesn’t matter, one star. 

Obviously you as a business owner shouldn’t sweat all bad reviews, but they do affect the algorithm and peoples opinions are valid; I value them generally; I don’t want to be closed when someone travels a long way to try our shop, and I don’t want to be closed for anyone who relies on us daily in any capacity.

I’m happy I got this opportunity to learn about plumbing and to touch up our baseboards, everything breaks and now I know how to fix this specific thing should it happen again. That’s all for now : ) ~ Elias