Repairing a towel rod in the Master Bathroom

 When we had the bathrooms remodeled, we wanted to install grab bars to help as we get older.  In addition, we choose sturdy metal towel rods, not as a grab bar, but realizing they may end up being used as one in an accident.

And sure enough, Linda tried to use the towel rod to keep her from following, but instead of helping, it gave way.  The towel rod is anchored at both ends, with a metal rod between them, but one of the ends gave way, allowing the metal rod to fall off.

The metal ends are attached to a post on the wall with a small set screw on the bottom.

Taking the ends off, we expose the two metal posts.

The posts are attached to the wall with two screws.  Of course this is a marble tile wall, so there are holes drilled into it and an insert plugged into the hole; the screw goes into the insert.

The end which failed seems to be missing the insert, which means one of the two screws was not secured into the wall.  (It's possible the insert was shoved back into the hole and dropped down behind the tile wall.  In fact it appears that the tile wall is a false wall attached to 1x2 wood strips on top of the previous wall.)

So we have a couple of possibilities.  We could replace the towel rod with a full-blown official grab bar, or we can re-install the existing towel rod.  Using an official grab bar would seem better, but since the wall is a false wall, with just the tile and it's cement backing, we would need to use the same sort of insert as the towel rod used (or was supposed to use).  So while it might be a slightly larger screw/bolt and insert, it would still be attached to the same wall, in the same way. (As opposed to attaching the bar by bolting it into a 2x4 or other solid structure inside/behind the wall.)

So we decided to just install an appropriate insert in the missing hole, and put the towel rod back up.

Repairing a Leak in Zone 7

 As part of replacing the fence, we tested the sprinkler system to make sure it all worked.  Two problems showed up.

One was a problem with Zone 6.  The lowest head, down by the fence, seemed to just dribble water constantly, whether zone 6 was on or not.  This suggested that the valve was failing to close completely.  So we found the valve for zone 6, buried in the lawn close to the rock retaining wall, dug it up, and cleaned it off.  Now it seems to be working, so we just left it alone, for now.

The other problem was a leak in Zone 7.  One of the heads was just gushing water out of the ground around it.  When we dug it up, we found that a root had grown right across the sprinkler line at the head and pushed the head to the side while breaking the irrigation line at both ends of the pipe that the head was screwed into.

We sawed off the root. and removed the broken pieces of pipe.

Without the root in the way, we can use the same design as before.  But since we need to cut back a little on both ends, we will need a short extension piece added to make up the distance.

Then we can attach the part that the head screws into.

and attach that to the original pipe.

Putting the sprinkler head back in place, we finish it off.

When we tested it, water still gushed all over.  Closer examination showed that the sprinkler head itself had been pushed to the side so that it cracked the body of the head.  We replaced the sprinkler head with a spare and everything worked.