So I headed off this morning to get all the parts for the heating plumbing... This shouldn't be a problem, as I'm not really ordering anything strange...
As I'm standing there at the parts desk at my usual plumbing supply, the guy is shaking his head as he enters part numbers... This is typically not a good sign...
Apparently they are out of normal gate valves... They have gate valves, but rather than $5.00, they have $30 and $45.00 valves... Hello, its a gate valve, its the single most common valve there is... So I asked why the ones they had were so expensive, and they could not give me a reason... They told me they had no idea what made the valves in back special, and recommended I get normal valves someplace else if I needed them today... Since I wanted everything today, I had them switch the gates to ball valves, and that was fine...
The next problem was they were confused why I wanted a globe valve along with all the gates... I didn't think they had to know why, but since I had time, I explained I needed to be able to throttle down one of the radiators in case it didn't balance with the others since it was new... That should have made sense, and he nodded, and disappeared in to the back to collect everything...
When I got home and sorted the fittings, I found one of the super expensive gate valves rather than the globe I asked for... The pull ticket had a cheap gate valve listed... I am very confused... So rather than going back to try to return something that isn't on the sales ticket, I picked up a globe at Home Desperate...
Strange, the guy didn't seem brain dead...
Incidentally, the crazy expensive valves are made of bronze rather than brass, and they are rated for steam rather than just hot water... Why nobody at the counter knew that I can't imagine... It took me all of 5 minutes to find out, and only that long since I'm still stuck in the dark ages of dial up...
At least I have everything now, and I don't have to go deal with them again for some time...