Tank 341 - 30 January 2K13 (Delta Faucets Still Stink!)

This morning I stopped at the Fas Mart near my house and refilled the Mighty Corolla with 10.697 gallons of gasoline @$3.259 per gallon. The car has been driven 379.1 miles, so my fuel economy was 35.44 miles per gallon.

It had been fifteen (15) days since I had refueled last, so that's nice.

Plus, I noticed that the gas stations near my office were billing $3.299 per gallon, so I didn't spend about 40 cents because I refilled near home rather than near work. Except for the 7-11 right near my office which was also charging just $3.259 per gallon so that's a lie.

There are two things that are occupying my thoughts recently. First is that it's looking likely that people in my office will be furloughed one day a week for about five and a half months because of the dysfunctional government. On the bright side, it's not like a forced one month vacation without pay, just a half-year stretch with 80% pay. Which is fine, I guess, more time to ride my bike, you know?

But more importantly, I am starting to conclude new truths about Delta faucets. As you recall, I had a lenghtny hate relationship with the Delta Touch Faucet in my kitchen. It sucked. I strongly disliked it. But those turds at the Delta Faucet company wouldn't take it back, only give me credit towards another Delta faucet. And we eventually took them up on that offer, got a new Delta faucet, and sold the touch faucet for about $200 on Ebay (I like to remember $200 on Ebay, but I don't recall for sure the actual sale price. I'm about 65% confident it was near $200 though...)

So we have this regular Delta faucet now. I have realized that it wasn't just the crappy "touch" interface that sucked.

It's the entire Delts faucet lever mechanism. It's not well-engineered.

Most of my life, unbeknownst to me until now, I used kitchen faucets of the "Moen" type: the handle pulled straight up and down to control water flow, and swiveled side to side to control hot/cold. In this manner, assuming each water input was at the same pressure (which is possible by adjusting the shutoff valves under the sink), one can turn the faucet on to the desired pressure and then swivel the handle left and right to adjust the hotness of the water.

Delta faucets don't operate like that. The flow/adjust lever mechanism is like an inverted triangle of "infinite adjustableness," except it doesn't work smoothly. Fine adjustments that are effortless in the Moen-style are treacerous with the Delta, as the lever does not, will not, and can not move smoothly in small fine increments. So I get stuck with good temperature at too little flow, or way too hot at acceptable flow, or way too cold at too much flow.

And what's concerning me even more is that there are probably millions of people who think this is normal and fine and acceptable, because they know no better!

So now I have announced to the family that this faucet is no longer acceptable and I'm going to replace it with a Moen in the near future.

And. They. Can't. Stop. Me.

Because if it comes down to it, I'll wait until a furlough day when everyone else is at work or at school and I'll zip on over to the hardware store and buy a Moen and swap it out and put the Crappy Delta faucet on the Ebay and I will be victorious!

So, in a way, I can thank the ineptitude of the government for freeing me up to fix this horrible faucet situation!