Local Animals: Ants in the tree sap

Word of the Day: internecine: of or relating to a struggle within a nation or group; mutually destructive or fatal

Photo of the Day:

Catamount in Bennington, VT

Plumbing: My battle with the shower diverter has come to a frustrating impasse. Nobody has the replacement part, as there are apparently no standards in shower-diverter manufacturing and they must have stopped making mine years ago. The local hardware guy is trying to locate one from his suppliers. Without the part, I cannot fix the shower without getting creative–not something you generally want to be with plumbing.

Then our hot water tank started leaking. We were told it was new when we bought the house four years ago. The previous owner lied (he did that a lot). It was actually nine years old. But I hired a guy to install the new heater… money well spent, since I didn’t have to deal with the pipes, natural gas, delivery of the new tank and removal of the old. Now we’re all hot and sassy again.

Music: Megadeth, “Peace Sells“

Warning: Flammable Vapors

Local Animals: Our son reported a blue jay yesterday. He was jaywalking. Hahaha hack hack [chokes] haha hack [wheezes, dies in private amusement after turning, yes, blue]

Word of the Day: skinflint: hoarder, pinchpenny

Photo of the Day:

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r

Accomplishments: Blood drawn for cholesterol test, hair cut, worked out at Y, tidied house and desk, read, survived terribly odds-and-endsy week

Music: Sleigh Bells, “D.O.A.” [full album stream at NY Times]

Credit: Alaska.gov

My research was wonderfully rewarded. According to the Wiktionary entry, bupkis is Yiddish for “large beans”, in reference to goat droppings.

The entry continues:

Often translated as meaning small round fecal pellets, referring to the shape of goat droppings. A colorful usage, though more emphatic expression (in Yiddish more so than in English) is “Bupkis mit Kuduchas” (באָבקעס מיט קודוצ׳ה), translating roughly to “shivering shit balls” – kuduchas referring to the condition of generalized shaking palsy.

I’m going to start using this phrase tomorrow, probably while I’m working on that shower diverter.

Remember in the Metallica video for “One” when they finally realize the blind/mute/deaf quadriplegic has been nodding his head in Morse Code for weeks, saying, Kill me… kill me… kill me…?

Divert, Damn You

The current trouble is the shower diverter, or the middle knob in our 3-handle setup. It’s supposed to send the water entirely out the tub spout, or entirely out the shower head. The typical problem is water leaking out the spout when you’re using the shower head. In my case, it’s the opposite: when the spout is set to on (to fill the bathtub), water starts coming out the shower head, too.

I’ve tried three different replacement washers, removed and scoured and greased the entire diverter stem, and put it all back together several different ways based on several different theories. Bupkis. The guy at the Pfeil Hardware (who clearly knew what he was talking about, as opposed to the well-meaning 21-year-old Lowes guy) says he’ll order a full replacement diverter since nobody carries this particular model anymore, and if that doesn’t work I’m going to try hitting the tile wall with the center of my forehead until I’m too stupefied to care about plumbing anymore.

Bonus! After shutting off the water supply during my efforts, some sediment got into the toilet’s fill valve and prevented it from stopping, so I got to take that apart, too, in order to rinse the sediment out. At least that worked.

The leak stopped: success. But now the diverter doesn’t work right. The diverter is, in our three-handle shower/bath, the knob that directs the water either to the spout or to the showerhead. The trouble now is that the showerhead constantly dribbles no matter what the diverter’s set to, and since I’ve already replaced the old washers I’m going to have to replace the entire diverter. Which is doable but requires another trip to Lowes.

Below is a series of photos showing how the rest of the job progressed.

First I killed the water downstairs and drains the faucets.

Then I removed the face-cap of the handles and unscrewed the screws hidden within, allowing me to pull the handles off.

Removal of Handle Cap

But the handles were stuck. I used a blow drier, hot as it would go, to expand and contract the inner parts and loosen the handles.

A Sexy Pink Blow Drier May Help to Loosen Stuck Handles

It worked on one handle but the other two were jammed tight, so I bought a $10 faucet puller that worked great. Once the handles were off, I removed a nut on each so the escutcheons would come free. Escutcheon is a fancypant word for the protective plate under the handles.

Removing Nut

Removing Fancypant Escutcheon

Next I unscrewed the entire stem assemblies from the pipes in the wall.

Unscrewing Stem Assembly

The stems were good so all I did was clean them up, lubricate them with a little plumber’s grease, and replace the washers on the end.

The Washer to Replace Is Located on the Upper Left End in This Photo...Hard to See Here But Easily Found in Person; It's Held Tight with a Screw You Have to Remove

Like I said, once I had it all reassembled, the leak was 100% fixed. But somewhere along the way the diverter got goofed and I think it must be the part itself, or possibly a piece called the “seat” inside the wall pipe. I’ll inquire at Lowes and see what the plumbing guy thinks. Update tomorrow…

Before, during, and after:

Spile in Tree (Click to Enlarge)

I lit a fire in the yard and boiled the sap in a big pan, but after hours of waiting I made a fatal mistake. Finished syrup, you see, doesn’t look like the thick refrigerated syrup when it’s boiling. Imagine, for instance, boiling wax and waiting for it to look like a candle. That was me. I kept waiting for the sap to thicken up, and when it finally did and I removed it from the heat, the syrup immediately foamed and cooled into a solid mass of unbreakable sugar, like ancient coral, that I couldn’t remove from the pan. I had to chuck the whole thing away and start over, and by that time the tree had just about stopped flowing.

I did manage to collect enough for a minor second attempt and stopped boiling at the proper time…when the sap just begins clinging to a spoon. The finished syrup was light and candy-sweet and worth the effort, and this year I’m ready to boil more.

Ready to Collect

Sap begins to flow in February and March. The key time is when the temperature is below freezing at night and above freezing during the day, which basically describes the entire month of January this season. I bought a new metal tap-spout, called a spile, and a new collection bucket. (Last year I had a flimsy plastic spile and tupperware.) This morning I drilled a 5/16″ hole into the southern side of the tree, as recommended, and hung the bucket. The sap isn’t running yet; when it is, the liquid flows immediately upon drilling. It looks like water. Whenever it starts to run, I’ll gather the collected sap in bottles and keep it in the fridge until I’m ready to boil.

You need a lot of sap. The ratio of sap to finished syrup is approximately 40:1, so 10 gallons of sap makes 1 quart of syrup.

Tap My Trees is a great resource. They have supplies, too, but I got an excellent deal on the bucket and spile at our local Agway.