Positraction

Gary wrote:
What exactly is wrong with your sink? At this rate you could have bought a basic plumbing book for $19.99 and some supplies and been half done for less than $300.00. I'm no skilled plumber (trust me) but I know the going rate for a master plumber is around $30 an hour and I don't know of many jobs that take 20 hours unless it involves a re-plumbing of the entire house. A sewer line replacement will cost you $3000 but much of that is sucked up in equipment rental. Cost of materials is generally one third the cost of labor. What is so wrong that a plumber doesn't want to do the job? You might find that it is too small and they don't want to be bothered.

Hey Gary, love your "This Old Crack House" blog. You must be new to mine, though. Maybe I should nutshell this, for others of you who might be new to the saga of the AssVac...

We're not just fixing a leaky faucet, here. And -- although we're plenty stupid -- we're not so stupid as to entertain estimates of six thousand dollars for a job that's too small to be bothered. This has been going on since April, and I'd like to think that if it were that simple we'd be much more than half done by now. Like, almost three-quarters!

We're converting from oil to gas heat. We were thinking about it anyway, because oil is yucky, and when our furnace blew up last spring we decided that was a good indication it was time.

Here in Massachusetts, anyway, this job requires a licensed plumber (and even if it didn't, I'm not the girl you want playing with gas on the say-so of an instruction booklet). The cost of the job includes a furnace, hot water heater, and a chimney liner (any one of which will by itself cost well over $300), plus sundry other materiel. All together at least twice the cost of labor -- which will be at least two days for at least two guys.

And if you can get a licensed plumber in Massachusetts for thirty bucks an hour, I say put him on retainer or keep him tied up in your basement.

Anyway, I'm happy to report the Kid's staying in the picture.

$3500.

We have ourselves a plumber!


CONTEST ALERT:
Anybody want to explain the title of this post -- why I chose it, I mean? (For newbies: that means if you get it right I'll write a poem with your name in it and post it on the blog. You can even name the format. Come on, play!)