Washing dishes in cold water

by James K. Sayre

Recently I discovered that, yes you can wash dishes in cold water. Probably not as well as in hot water, but it can be done. A few weeks ago, the handle my kitchen faucet, which had been slowly leaking for several years, finally completely snapped off. Suddenly there was water everywhere: hot water, cold water, drain water. I closed the two shut-off valves under the sink and mopped up the mess.

The next morning, I called and left a message with a plumber that had done some work for me a couple of years ago. He never called back, so I went off to a local hardware store and bought a replacement kitchen faucet. Finally I realized that I could not reach the two nuts that held the present kitchen faucet in place; they were high up behind the kitchen sink. I returned the (Made in China) kitchen faucet to the hardware store for credit. Then I called a fancier local plumber. It turns out that they could not even give me a ballpark estimate of the labor time needed (after being in business for some ninety years...); they also pulled the cable TV installers trick: they demanded a 4 hour window of when they would show up (unless I paid an additional $35 for an actual appointment....). I balked at the whole setup and said no thank you...

Now I operate the kitchen faucet with a long screwdriver to wedge up and turn on the cold water and push down on it to turn it off with my thumb. When I want hot water, I use a pair of pliers to rotate the control to the hot side, and then turn on the hot water shut off valve. So I do some dish washing with cold water, and once a day or so, I use hot water...

If I can bother to go to the hardware store and buy the required basin wrench and find a Made-in-USA kitchen faucet, I can replace the present jerry-rigged setup. But I now use less hot water and probably less cold water too...

End.

Bottlebrush Press has maintained its presence on the Internet since 1996.

Return to the home page of Bottlebrush Press: The homepage of Bottlebrush Press

This web page was recently created by James Sayre.

Author's Email: sayresayre@yahoo.com

Web page last updated on 28 October 2007.