Tag: leak

Unexpected Plumbing, Again

January 5, 2017 / / 2 Comments

I thought we were done with this. When we moved into the basement, we were finally using the new plumbing exclusively. The old galvanized pipe was completely disconnected and I assumed that meant our random plumbing issues were behind us. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case, and the cause was one we’ve become quite familiar with: freezing. All our pipes are in the basement, which is heated, so here again, I thought our frozen pipe problems were in the past as well. Of course, there’s an exception: the washer and dryer are on the unheated first floor. Our original plan was to fit them into the basement while we are living down here, but we didn’t have much room and we opted instead for our dishwasher.

The plumbing lines that goes up the first floor is new copper, and it has a quarter-turn valve about 18 inches above the floor level in the wet wall. We’ve been shutting off that valve and draining the water past it when it gets really cold so we don’t break our washing machine (again). We noticed water dripping in the mechanical room and investigation revealed that the valve itself had failed, with water dripping from a seam in the valve body. Presumably this is due to freezing.

I went to Home Depot and of course they were out of stock, so I went to Menards and picked up the replacement valve and some sundry other supplies. Then I discovered I was out of flux, so I went back to Home Depot for that, so in other words it was a typical project. I managed to solder in the new valve with a length of pipe and a male adapter so I could connect our temporary PEX washer pipes. I also capped the hot water line, which I’d been meaning to do for a while. Finally, I wrapped all the pipes in the heating cable and covered it in pipe insulation that we had lying around from previous frozen plumbing escapades.

Water is no longer dripping in the mechanical room and hopefully we won’t have any further plumbing mishaps. I’m starting to work through how all the new drain and vent will be run, since I need to remove the remaining old stuff, and we obviously need a functional vent to the roof. I also pulled out the rest of the old supply plumbing from the second floor, so we officially have no more galvanized pipe in the house!

Basement Progress Update

August 24, 2016 / / 0 Comments

We’ve been busy in the basement! So busy, in fact, that I haven’t been doing a good job of posting about it, nor even taking all the photos that keep the posts from simply being my long-winded explanations of why everything takes so damn long. So, in the interest of getting everyone caught up to where things are, I’m doing a catch-all post on the flurry of basement activity. My last update was August 5th, but the work it described took place in mid-July, so we’re actually a quite a bit behind. Let me jump to current though, and say we met our deadline of August 20th, and we are living in the basement. I’m actually typing this while sitting in the living room of the basement at an actual desk.

Temporary walls framed
Drywalling temporary walls

So, a lot has happened since we mudded the permanent basement walls. We got the permanent walls painted, the tub tiled, grouted, and caulked, and the bathroom and kitchen cabinets installed. That let us call back our plumbers, who got the finish plumbing done and reconnected the water heater in the basement. With that goal met, we framed and drywalled the temporary walls. These walls create bedrooms in the basement while we’re living down here, but once the rest of the house is done we can take them down and the main area of the basement can be finished as an entertaining space. We didn’t bother mudding this drywall, but we did paint it. I installed the interior doors, which included three doors in the permanent walls (bathroom, mechanical room, and between the front and back rooms), and two bedroom doors in the temporary walls. We cased the doors as well as the window in the kitchen.

Tiling in progress
Finished bathroom sink and mirror
Finished tub with LED lighting

I installed the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, along with the additional bathroom lighting. When we tiled, we installed a metal track at the top of the tub wall and ran a strip of adhesive LEDs along it. These are connected to an additional strip above the mirror and hooked up to a power supply inside the top of the medicine cabinet, which is switched on the same circuit as the overhead light. The tracks are covered by a snap on plastic diffuser. We’re pretty pleased with how this turned out. All of it is either waterproof or wet-rated, so the shower shouldn’t cause any issues.

Flush-mounted sink
Cabinet support frame
Test-fit
Installed, pre-dishwaher

In the kitchen we installed a butcher block counter with a single basin sink (Amazon literally sold us the kitchen sink). The sink was originally going to be under-mounted, but there wasn’t enough room for the clips inside the base cabinet. Since the sink can be mounted either way, I opted for top mount, but routed the top of the counter so that it sits flush, making it easier to wipe the counter into the sink. My measurements didn’t properly account for the curb when I bought the cabinets, so we built a wooden frame for them to sit on top off. This puts them about 4″ taller than typical, but we’re tall and it works for us. I also didn’t properly account for the dishwasher height being greater than the cabinets minus their feet, and had to retrofit the frame with reciprocating saw, oscillating tool, planer, socket wrenches, and additional 2x6s. The dishwasher is installed, and I never want to think about it again.

Painting with Drylok
Painted curb and wall
Painted bay

 

We painted the curb and the bottom foot of the wall with Drylok waterproofing paint. I’ve read a lot about building science and don’t want to seal brick, but despite our exterior water management efforts and interior weeping system, we’re still getting water coming through the walls on heavy rain. By only painting the concrete and the brick below the frost line, my hope is that water will be forced down into the weeping system, but won’t freeze within the brick and damage it. Having a radiant-heated slab should also prevent freezing. It’s been raining enough that the Drylok wasn’t able to dry fully. I bought some additional waterproofing putty for active leaks that I still need to install.

Temporary walls
Gas line painted and mounted
Door installed and cased
Window cased

I put up privacy film on the window along our neighbors walkway, put pipe insulation on the incoming water line to prevent condensation, added a light switch in the mechanical room, ran a gas line for the stove, put up shelves, moved the phone line for our Internet connection, put up a shower curtain rod, swapped our mud rings for metal electrical box covers, painted the old part of the gas line before the meter and mounted it to the wall. Sarah hung shades, scrubbed, mopped, and scraped the floor, and watched our two rambunctious children while I spent countless nights either in the basement or running to Home Depot and Menards. Sarah’s parents, her brother-in-law, and her brother all pitched in with assistance on trim, painting, the cabinets, the door handles, and brushing down the walls. My mom came up multiple times to watch the kids so Sarah and I could both do tiling and painting. Dean and Matt B came to help us move last weekend, and while there’s still a ton of stuff upstairs to be sorted and packed into storage, we’re moved. We couldn’t have made the deadline without all their help and we’re very grateful for it. Without the deadline fixed in our minds, this easily would have taken an additional month or two, and I’m so glad it didn’t. We lived in the second floor for five years (exactly). Considering we wanted this to be a five-year project, considering we shifted to the basement plan in November of 2014 (21 months ago) and planned for it to take about a year, and especially considering how very far we still have to go to finish this crazy house, I’m relieved.

Living room, before furniture

Living room, before furniture

We’re planning to relax a bit, but we still have a lot to do, just to get the basement situated (and not leaking) and to get the second floor ready to demo. The next couple weekends are relaxing (going to the beach and going camping), but hopefully after that we can get settled and start on the next exciting, exhausting, and endless phase of this project.

More Unexpected Plumbing

May 12, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Every time working on the house involves swinging a sledgehammer and generally banging on things, rust inside our terrible, terrible galvanized steel pipes flakes off into the water and clogs up the aerator on the faucets. When this happens the water faucets slow to a trickle. This means that nearly every time I have to swing a sledgehammer I have to then bring the pipe wrench up to the bathroom and kitchen faucets, take off the aerators and clean them out, removing the little flecks of rust. Then the faucets work fine again. At least, they did until yesterday.

Old faucet

Old faucet

I’d been dealing with the progressively worse faucet in the bathroom for about a week and finally cleaned out the aerator. Unfortunately, either loosening or tightening it back on resulted in an sudden flood of water under the sink and onto the floor. It’s a pedestal sink, which in this one case was a good thing because it meant I noticed the problem right away instead of after it had soaked things, but it was still a mess. Of course this was right after we had gotten back from a big trip to Menards, where I easily could have bought a faucet and it was late and Sarah was taking the car the next day.

After removing the faucet, which was rather a pain because the hoses connect up underneath the sink where there isn’t any room to work, I took it apart and confirmed that it wasn’t possible to repair it. The faucet is very cheap. It may not actually be that old, but it’s basically designed to leak at least some water, and not designed for the aerator to be regularly cleaned out. We ordered a new faucet for pick up in store from Home Depot.

We decided that Sarah could drop me off at Home Depot on her way out and I could take the bus home. I’ve taken the bus to Home Depot on a couple of other occasions and the timing worked out really well. I was worried that on a Sunday I’d have to wait a while, but the bus was there right as I came out of the store and I hopped on. The next one would have been 18 minutes later.

New faucet

New faucet

We can’t fix the tile that won’t come clean, but we can put in a nice new faucet. It’s WaterSense, which means in uses less water but more importantly for our purposes puts out a decent stream despite our poor water pressure. The idea is that we’ll re-use this faucet for the basement bathroom, along with a shower kit we bought years ago that’s still in the box. That limited us to brushed nickel, which was good because we didn’t really plan on designing our other bathrooms just yet. I’m excited because it’s single handle, which I think is easier to use.

Unexpected Plumbing

March 18, 2013 / / 0 Comments
Plumbing wall

Plumbing wall

After the demo party my mind was set on clearing out the rest of the lath. The dumpster was completely full, but we ordered a new one that was being delivered on Thursday. Wednesday evening I went down to start pulling up the subfloor in the kitchen and the floor in the foyer and I noticed a drip coming from the plumbing wall. It wasn’t too serious, so I propped a bucket under the pipe, supported by a board, and went about my work.

Wednesday night as we were falling asleep, we heard a crash from the first floor. The bucket had filled enough that it slipped and fell to the floor. Thursday the new dumpster arrived, but rather than getting to work filling it I  had to deal with the leak. It had gotten significantly worse and was splattering water all over. The leak was coming from somewhere up in the wall, in the second floor. I climbed up a ladder and shined a flashlight on the culprit: a pinhole leak.

Leaky pipe

Leaky pipe

The rusty spot was spraying water with aploumb, serious enough that it needed to be dealt with immediately. I turned off the water and determined that the pipe goes to no where. In the picture above you can see the yellowish pipe goes up and elbows into a tee. That is the supply pipe, coming from the basement. The top of the tee leads to all of the second floor fixtures. The bottom pipe, the one with the leak, goes down about eight feet and is capped. I believe it was the original supply pipe but it’s hard to say. The plumbing is old galvanized steel and has clearly seen some modifications over the years. For example, in the first floor wall there was a capped line going to about head height in the bathroom (and not to a shower head): it used to service a toilet with an elevated tank.

Because the pipe wasn’t connected to anything I decided it would be easiest to simply remove it and cap it, rather than try to patch the leak. In hindsight, I absolutely should have patched the leak. The same corrosion that had weakened the pipe to the point that water could simply push through the metal had made the threaded joint so impossibly strong that it would not come loose despite hours of prying on it with a pipe wrench. Part of the problem is that the tee that it connected to is up in the wall and I couldn’t get a second wrench on it.

I worked on it all evening, and once Derek was in bed Sarah came down and the two of us worked on it until about midnight when we finally gave up. With the water still shut off and the pipe partially disassembled, I took off work on Friday. Friday morning I was back at it. Since the water was already shut off I removed all of the first floor supply plumbing, something I’d been meaning to do for a while anyway. I took the bus over to Home Depot, since Sarah had the car, and picked up some supplies.

After liberally applying PB Blaster, heating the fitting with a propane torch, and using an 18″ pipe wrench with a four foot pipe as a breaker bar, the pipe still would not give. Finally, cursing pipe wrenches that slip and galvanized pipe that sucks beyond reason as a water pipe, I gave one more frustrated push and it gave way, or at least so I thought. I unscrewed the pipe and pulled it down from the ceiling only to discover that the pipe had not, in fact, come out of the tee, the tee itself had sheered off the elbow and come out with the pipe.

The accursed pipe, pinhole leak and still-attached sheered off elbow visible

The accursed pipe, pinhole leak and still-attached sheered off elbow visible

Now instead of simply capping the pipe I was going to have to put two ends of threaded pipe together. That meant I needed a union, which meant I needed to go back to the hardware store. Just then it started raining outside. Looking at the dangling supply pipe I realized that it wasn’t the cold water pipe I was dealing with but the hot, which meant I could turn off the valve at the hot water heater and turn the water back on, allowing the use of the toilet and sinks. In fact, I could have done that Thursday night and not been without water for twelve hours.

I trudged over to the hardware store, bought the union along with a 3/4″ to 1/2″ reducer and came back. In one more oddity of the plumbing of the house, the pipe from the hot water heater is 1/2″, but the tee it connected to was 3/4″. That meant my reducer was actually going to be an expander, something you really shouldn’t do with plumbing.

Replacement pipe

Assembled replacement pipe

I removed the upper segment of the hot water pipe and took off the broken elbow. Then I put together a new section using the expander and a section of salvaged pipe, along with a coupling. I put this on the end of the hot water pipe segment and reconnected it to the fitting up in the wall with a lot of teflon tape. Finally I put the union onto either end of the pipe and connected it together. It was finished, or so I thought.

I turned the hot water back on and immediately a drip started. After shutting it off I inspected and found that the drip was not from any of the fittings I had put together; it was from the tee I had connected to up in the wall. There was a leak on the side where a pipe connected it, probably torqued by the earlier wrenching much as the tee that had sheered off had been. Removing this section was not an option. There was no way to get to it without completely opening up the wall behind the kitchen sink on the second floor. Because the leak was small I found some plumbers epoxy and wrapped the whole fitting in it and waited twenty minutes for it to cure. When I turned on the water again there were no leaks.

Repaired and patched pipe

Repaired and patched pipe

You can see the fitting globbed with putty. I actually added some more after taking this picture. I want to point out that taking these photographs up in the wall using the flash and getting the focus right while I was on top of a ladder is incredibly challenging. I hope you appreciate the effort. In hindsight I should have patched the pinhole leak with the putty and been done with it, but I had forgotten that I had it (I bought it for the condo) and after discovering that the leaky pipe didn’t go anywhere I really thought it would be simplest to just remove it (obviously not).

After all of this, the inevitable crud that was broken loose inside the pipes spit brown chunks from the fixtures for a couple of minutes. Even after cleaning out the aerator on the kitchen sink faucet its pressure was abysmal, while the other fixtures worked fine. Because it was slow on cold and hot water I knew it was the mixing valve. Saturday I took the faucet apart and cleaned out the cartridge and got it back up to its normal mediocre performance. I look forward to replacing all of this garbage with copper. Unfortunately for the time being we’re stuck with it.