Our water bill was down $roughly $30.00 for October.  We’re pushing the reasons for that to the following:

• Sprinklers were turned off part way through the month
• The new dishwasher was installed after the month of October
• I didn’t bathe for most of October

OK, so the last two reasons don’t count, but the dishwasher will help a lot, and I fixed a very slow, but persistent dripping valve that lead to our sprinkler system, too, earlier this month.  Hooray for savings where we can get them!

I had to laugh because to fix a problem with my evaporative cooler I had to buy some plumbers tape. Plumbers tape is a very thin tape that gets wrapped around threaded pipes or screws and the tape helps keep a water tight seal around the threading. I picked some up for just under a dollar at Lowe’s along with a few other odds and ends and headed home.

I climbed up on my roof to secure the tape to the water valve floater’s stem so that the water would stop entering the floater and making it a sinker (thus flooding my swamp cooler and causing water to flow out of the overflow hole). I wrapped the threaded stem, secured the floater and climbed off the room and let the water fill up the swamp cooler again and waited for the overflow. No overflow took place and the problem was solved.

I then walked into the garage with the plumber’s tape and reached to put it on the hook where I would expect to put such a thing. That is where I found the last purchased plumbers tape that I had all along. Ha!