Donna had a great day yesterday. She had no particular plan – nothing that absolutely had to happen. She went out for what ended up as a 5-mile run. She ran on the horse trails up to and over a ridge and back down by the river. She had a lot of fun exploring the area. Then she took an afternoon nap. She said it was a perfect day.
I had a mission to complete. Our kitchen faucet needed to be replaced. I rode the scooter over Usery Pass. I remembered seeing faucets for sale at Gene’s RV in Apache Junction. I didn’t look too closely when we were there on Thursday. I didn’t know at the time that I would need a new one.
House on the top of a hill near Usery Pass
The selection of kitchen faucets at Gene’s RV wasn’t what I was looking for. I ended up going to Home Depot where I found a Delta Grant* kitchen faucet. It’s a single handle with a single pillar base. It has a removable head that switches from streaming water to spraying. I also bought a plumber’s basin wrench, thinking this may make the job go easier.
On the way back from Home Depot i stopped at a roadside park where Power Road becomes Bush Highway and snapped a picture of Red Mountain.
Red Mountain across the Salt River
When I got home, I got busy with the replacement project. The old faucet was a Moen. Looking underneath the sink, I couldn’t understand how it was attached. The faucet has a 1-3/8 inch pipe coming through the countertop that serves as a mount. The pipe is also the conduit for the hot and cold copper supply tubes and the flexible sprayer tubes. All of these tubes are packed fairly tight in the pipe.
I searched online and found Moen faucet replacement instructions. It turns out that along with all the tubing in the pipe, there’s a threaded stud with a nut holding the pipe against a mounting plate. I would’ve taken a few pictures, but it was so tight in the cabinet under the sink, I didn’t try. I pulled the copper supply lines and bent them away from each other. I finally found the stud, which is hollow and serves double duty as the supply for the sprayer.
First I had to remove the sprayer hose. This wasn’t so easy. The basin wrench I bought was no help. After a bit of trial and error, banging my head against the counter and basin along with a few choice words, I found a way to get a 15mm open ended wrench on the sprayer nut. Once I removed the sprayer hose, I could see where the nut holding the stud against the mounting plate was. Of course, over time, the stud corroded and removing this nut was no fun at all. I have bumps and sore spots on my head today from hitting it repeatedly against the basin and cabinet shelf. Perseverance paid off and I finally had the Moen faucet out.
When I read various instructions on the Moen faucet online, they all agreed on one thing. Removing an old Moen faucet is the hardest part. This is true. Installing the new Delta faucet was straightforward. The mounting system they use is much more sensible. But I hit another snag. The Delta supply tubes are PEX with 3/8″ compression fittings. The PEX supply line fittings in our coach are 1/2″ pipe thread.
I got back on the scooter and made the 8-mile (each way) trip to Ace Hardware. After searching through various plumbing fittings, I found 1/2″ pipe to 3/8″ compression adapters. Woo-hoo. Home free now. The adapters worked perfectly and the installation was complete in no time. I would estimate the time spent removing the old faucet was over an hour. Installing the new one took 15 minutes (plus the time to go find the adapters).
New Delta faucet
Once that project was complete, Donna and I took a short walk along the river. I snapped a couple of photos. We came back to the coach and sat outside in our new director’s chairs. I enjoyed a cold beer. I was feeling a little beat up from working under the kitchen sink.
View to the north – look closely and you’ll see the fountain in Fountain Hills
Giant saguaro
The camp host stopped by and we chatted while we watched the sunset.
High, thin clouds make a spectacular sunset
A trip to the laundromat is on my agenda today. We don’t use our washing machine while we’re dry camped.
*Just so you know, if you decide to purchase one of these through the Amazon link in this post, I’ll earn a small commission. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!
Hey I was just thinking….you guys should get Neat Receipts. It’s a scanner that organizes receipts, recipes, etc. You can use it for just about anything. It makes itemizing deductions really easy for taxes too. Everything gets stored in the program on your computer so if you ever need to find something you can even search dates or keywords. It’s pretty cool. There’s a desktop and portable version. Check into it. Love you.
Hey, Mike, I have a friend from high school who owns the Saddle Bronc Grill in Fountain Hills! Go by and tell Dwight I said hello! I think he still works a day job so he might not be there except in the evenings. Here’s the link to the website: http://www.saddlebroncgrill.com/
Thanks drew. I might have implied I had one (a cold one), but in reality I had my fair share!
hi Mike,
you are not working too hard eh? there are so many days more to come, and 2 directors’ chairs??? well I love your writings, it read like a book, and the picture, wow, the sunset one is nice to paint.
Ad says hi to you too, he love’s his retirement, and we are traveling a lot, playing tennis and golf, and ofcourse sailing in the summer. it’s winter here in Europe now, but too warm for the time of the year, 5 C, we have still roses In the garden, but next week there will be snow, yoepi!
have fun, and we keep posted
love to my dear friend Donna ( This year 30 years!!!)
and a bear hug for you,
karin
Hi Karin, Thanks for the kind words. So nice to hear from you. Donna and I send our love. Tell Ad we said hi.
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