These seemingly innocuous signs hid the potential for a serious flood in my basement.
I realized that it meant a plumbing repair in the future but I didn't think it was urgent. Since it involved turning off the water to the entire house, I planned to do it when I was doing some other plumbing repairs.
That day came last weekend when I had to shut off the water to install a new, low-flo toilet. Since the water was shut off near the leaking fixture, I decided to do the repair. I cut out the fixture and soldered in a connector.
Once everything was fixed up, I turned my attention to the leaking fixture, a copper T with a threaded insert. I lightly put a pair of pliers on the threaded insert...only to have it snap right off.The picture on the left shows the fixture and threaded insert.
Apparently only a very small portion of one thread was catching. At any time, the thread could have let go and started dumping water into my basement while I was at work, away for a weekend and so on.
So the moral of the story is do not ignore water leaks.
