On Mon, 12 May 2014 21:18:57 -0700 (PDT), Higgs Boson
wrote:

Found a huge cache of dental floss in a bathroom cabinet long unvisited.
I'd always heard it was very strong, so went on-line and found many sites listing scores of uses from shoelaces to fishing line to repairing cracks in walls, to slicing cakes, and on & on.

This one was clever:

Quiet A Dripping Faucet
This little trick might mean the different between you and a good night's sleep. If your faucet is leaking and it's too late at night to call a plumber, tie a piece of floss at the spout and let it trail down into the basin. This way, the water will simply slide down the string, instead of drip-drip-dripping you awake all night.

HB

In Chicago our aparment bathroom had separate faucets for hot and cold,
and the hot was very hot, so I bought a mixer at the hardware store.
Each end of it had an O-shaped rubber piece and the nozzle of each
faucet could be put in one, and the output was in the middle.

But the faucets were pigeon-toed, not parallel, both pointing forwards.
They were angled somewhat towards each other.

So I twisted them until they fit.

A few weeks later, the cold started to leak, under the sink. I put a
bucket, but it was clear that would only work for a hour or two.

So I put a 12" box under the bucket, filled some surgical tubing with
water, and turned it upside down to make a siphon into the toilet. It
wasn't quite long enough so I put a big soda straw in the end of the
tubing, and the rest of the soda straw under the seat, but above the
bowl.

It was making noise, so I wrapped a washcloth around the pipe that was
leaking and let it run to the bucket.

The plumber didn't come for about a month, no adjustments were made to
the setup, and no water ever got on the floor. The siphon was
self-regulating, speeding up when the leak speeded up (and the height of
the water in the bucket was even higher than the end of the soda straw),
and slowing down when it slowed down, (and the difference in height was
less.)