Month: June 2016

Basement Rough-in

June 22, 2016 / / 0 Comments

It’s been a long time coming (like most things in this project) but we’ve passed our rough plumbing inspection for the basement! We passed our electrical inspection a month and a half ago, but we’ve grown used to the plumbing going slowly. This phase of the project was frustrating because we couldn’t do much ourselves to speed the process along, and we kept running into issues. Fortunately, all of them have been resolved.

Bathroom rough-in

Bathroom rough-in

Our new water service is a 1½” copper line, whereas our old service was only ¾”. Because of that, when we installed our whole-house water filter a few years back, we ran ¾” pipe. The plumbers took out a lot of that line when they brought in the new service and started adding branches for the bathroom, including the connections for the water heater ( temporarily on the first floor) running mostly in 1″ before and after the filter. On top of that, when I went to hook the filter back up, I realized that the new curb in the basement was preventing the filter from sitting close enough to the wall to connect to the existing pipes, meaning I was going to have to reconfigure it anyway. I bought new, bigger, 1″ filter housings and asked the plumbers to re-plumb the remaining section so that everything would be 1″ (and to add back the water heater hookup while they were at it).

Filter re-installed

Filter re-installed

The plumbers seemed vexed by the filter setup and I had to have them come back and change it multiple times until it was correct. This added weeks to the process all by itself, on top of the generally slow work they’d been doing. Then they asked for their money, so I asked when it was going to get inspected. That took another couple of weeks to get the inspector out, but they finally wrapped up Thursday of last week.

Ejector pit and main stack
New water service and grounding strap
Finished electrical work (Ok, there’s one BX line in there yet)

The electrical work went quickly because a lot of it was already done last year, but there were a couple of additions and modifications. We had to redo the grounding strap because the water service moved to the front of the house, add outlets for the sump pump and ejector pit, and add the switches, lights, and outlets for the bathroom and other new interior walls. We still need Lester, our radiant contractor, to come back and connect the PEX lines in the slab and disconnect our radiators on the second floor, but that shouldn’t impact the rest of the work we’re doing.

We were gone all weekend, but now I’m finally back to work, with a new goal of getting us moved into the basement by August 20th, the fifth anniversary of us moving into the second floor. I think if we’re still living in the second floor more than five years into our “five-year project”, I’ll have to start considering arson. There’s a lot to do, starting with the venting for the bath fan, leveling the bathroom ceiling, and a few other minor tasks. That will be followed by drywall and tiling, the temporary walls, and the bathroom fixtures.

Unexpected Water Management

June 1, 2016 / / 2 Comments

In my post about the sump pump, I discussed our concerns about water in the basement. Those concerns have proved well founded, because after some heavy Spring rains, it happened. Our interior weeping system directs water under the concrete slab to the sump pit and the sump pump pumps it away, and this system is working great. However, water doesn’t always come from below. Because of the thick, clay soil, water following the path of least resistance can come right through the brick basement walls. That water is coming in above the footer curb in the basement and then drains onto the top of the basement floor, bypassing the weeping system completely.

Back corner
South Side

There are ways we could have avoided this. The preferred method is to excavate around the outside of the house and install a water barrier on the outside of the basement walls, but our house is less than four feet from the neighboring houses to either side, risking structural collapse of both our basement and theirs. Another method is installing a dimpled plastic membrane on the inside of the basement walls that provides a path for water to drain down below the slab and into the interior weeping system. We didn’t do that for a couple reasons. First is the potential for damaging the bricks, both from persistent water and from freezing. Second is that the membrane would have to wrap over the footer curb, and we’d have to frame walls in front of it, further reducing our floor space (by about 50 square feet). While we do plan to insulate inside the brick walls, we’re going to do so without a vapor barrier, so that the bricks can dry if they get wet. The interior-facing side of the footer curb will remain exposed, or at most covered by trim.

Old downspout accordion

Old downspout accordion

While we’re exploring ways to divert water that comes through the walls, the bigger focus is on keeping water away from the basement walls in the first place. Recently it poured, and I discovered that the downspout I’d put in after we removed the back porch was clogged, causing a fountain at the back corner of the house right where we were getting most of the water. Once I fixed that, the downspout was splashing about fifteen feet into the back yard… and then running across the patio to the other corner of the house. Worse still, our neighbors’ downspout was clogged and all the water from half their house was cascading into the gangway. The downspout we had on that side was running across the gangway and wasn’t sloped away from the house, so water was draining to the same corner. I got the water from both our gutters to divert to the stone-filled catch basin, but something more permanent was needed.

Working on downspouts
New downspout
Across and down

I ran to Home Depot and got some supplies, then got up on a ladder and reconfigured our downspouts. The gutter on the gangway side now drains across the back of the house between the first and second story, where it joins with the other downspout. It then drains about twenty feet from the house, but I plan to extend that to thirty. I also unclogged the neighbors gutter and ended the waterfall in the gangway. Since making this change we haven’t seen additional water, but I’m not yet convinced we’ve solved the problem. I have some other steps I can take if we see any more water.