Beth's plumbing projects
While I spent the last month in New Zealand, Beth's had to get familiar with a lot of tools that she'd never normally use such as G-clamps and silicone. A few days after I left, one of the new water pipe joints that Antonio made burst and she had to learn to connect it back together more firmly using metal hose clamps. This involves heating up the pipe first using a cheap gas torch we bought for R$30 which can only be described as a flame thrower! Not only did she fix the broken join, she also added a tap so that we can now disconnect the water to the island without having to go all the way to the guest house where the water enters the property :-)
After having mastered the flame thrower she had gained a lot of confidence, and so then went on to make another connection to get water into the house and added a kitchen tap!
And then still not content, she added a down-pipe from the gutter into the water tank which involved quite a bit of Gambiarra since the gutter is just a PVC pipe cut down the middle, and she didn't have all the right pieces at hand either.
After doing these three jobs and two gambiarras, she has now earned the right to publicly display her plumber's crack to indicate that her work is of a professional quality.
Note that whale tails are also generally accepted as indicating high quality workmanship in the case of female plumbers, but you should probably steer clear of male plumbers using this methodology.
