It is a classic fear of anyone with a washing machine that one of the water supply hoses, hidden away at the back of the machine, will burst and bring on Noah’s second deluge. This happens because you have to turn off two valves by hand, twisting each one laboriously, to remove the pressure from the rubber hoses when the machine is not in use. No one ever does this. Thus, the rubber hoses are constantly under full water pressure.

Since moving into 114 Warren St. just a few weeks ago, it was on my early list of repairs to replace the two manual valves for the washing machine with a single convenient lever valve so that we could in fact avert this feared event.

Finally, last week I got around to the task. To my surprise (and delight at seeing that this fear was not without foundation), I discovered that one of the hoses was just about to burst.

So, my little project to replace the two manual valves with a single lever unit grew to include buying new wire mesh reinforced supply hoses

Now all we have to do is to actually flip the little single lever valve to turn off the water between uses.