Tag: plumbing

Unexpected Plumbing, Yet Again

March 4, 2017 / / 0 Comments

At some point I guess we should just expect unexpected plumbing to happen. However, I can say with certainty that we didn’t expect a loud thud followed by a cascading shower of water from the mechanical room ceiling one fine Saturday evening. We’d just gotten the kids into bed and Sarah was doing dishes when it happened. I came running from the living room (one of us has to sit watch so the kids stay in bed and go to sleep) and she was already pointing me out the back door and upstairs.

Cast iron pipe dropped

When we got upstairs we saw what had happened: one of the three cast iron soil and vent stacks in the wet wall had basically fallen straight down about two feet. The straps holding it in place were both snapped, the top of the stack was in the attic instead of sticking through the roof, and most critically, the PVC pipe it connected to at the bottom (where the washing machine drains) had cracked at the main stack and the waste water from the washing machine had poured out of the broken pipe end into the basement from above.

Broken fitting

The good news is that there wasn’t any serious damage. The 2″ cast iron pipe was already slated to be removed, nothing in the mechanical room that got wet was harmed, and the PVC section connecting the washer was temporary. We turned off the washer and went to bed, leaving the problem for the next day.

Vent stack dropped out of roof

Sunday morning I started by removing the cast iron pipe. This drain used to be used by the kitchen drains from the first and second floors. Apparently, it had been supported by the plaster and lath of the walls, and with only the straps (and the PVC pipe underneath) holding it up, it simply gave way. The bad news was that the PVC had cracked at a fitting, right before it went into the main stack, so I had two options: use a heat gun, some pliers and about an hour to pry the remains of the fitting out and try to re-use the Tee, or cut out the 4″ PVC stack section and put in a new one. That seemed easier, so I ran to the store and got some supplies, including a 10′ section of 4″ pipe.

Pipe removed

I managed some Three-Stooges-level incompetence when it came to removing the old PVC pipe section, spilling the remaining water inside at several opportunities before finally getting the rest into a bucket and the pipe out of the wall…before knocking over the bucket on the floor. I did my best to clean up the new mess on the subfloor and Sarah put down even more towels in the mechanical room below. I put together a new branch for the washing machine and glued it together with minimal fuss.

Roof penetration

The final step was to patch the hole in the roof. When I got up on a ladder in the second floor and took a look, I found the expected congealed tar, but also some bent aluminum flashing. Because I didn’t want to get onto the roof and do a more extensive repair, I simply put some flashing tape over the aluminum cylinder from within.The roof (and walls) already leak, so it doesn’t need to be perfect at this point. We’ll be putting on a new roof in the not-too-distant future and it’s Good Enough™ for now.

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!

Second Floor Demo Prep

November 11, 2016 / / 0 Comments

With the drainage project finally wrapped up, we’re getting ready to demo the second floor! As in the past, we’re having a demo party where friends come over to smash the hell out of the walls and tear everything down. To make sure this process goes smoothly, safely, and makes as little mess as possible, we have some work to do up front. First, we need to clean up the first floor. With us living in the basement, and the second floor empty, we’re using the first floor as storage. Between all of our projects, moving to the basement, and life in general, it has a tendency to get away from us and turn into a cluttered, disorganized mess. When we demo the floor above, dust and debris are going to rain down between the floorboards, so everything needs to be as contained and protected as we can make it.

Empty kitchen

Empty kitchen awaiting destruction

I tackled the back (everything behind the wet wall) since this is my de facto workshop where all the tools are kept. After we rushed to finish the basement, I wound up bringing them back up in boxes and not putting them away. I re-organized and cleared out the worst of it, but honestly, I still have a lot more cleanup to do. However, the critical part was I made a space big enough to put all of the kitchen cabinets from upstairs. When we bought the house, we got a bunch of free kitchen cabinets from Sarah’s grandmother (who in turn had gotten them from a friend of Sarah’s parents when they remodeled their kitchen). We’re done with them now, so we’re giving them to Sarah’s parents, since they’ve bought rental property in Florida and want to redo a kitchen down there. Until they pick them up, we needed them off the walls and in the first floor. Sarah cleared up the front of the first floor, which was a bigger process since it involved not just organizing, but throwing away what we don’t want, donating what we don’t use, moving some of what we want into the basement (and finding homes for it all down there), organizing the rest of it into bins and boxes, and finally, covering it all with tarps and drop cloths.

I disconnected the water, which was complicated by the fact we still have the washer and dryer on the first floor and by the way the plumbers replaced a perfectly good dielectric union with a brass female adapter and my side-drain valve with a regular valve (both for no apparent reason other than to piss me off). That meant to disconnect the hot water I had to cut the copper pipe past the valve (which was full of water) and drain it that way. I still need to solder a cap on the pipe. For the cold water (which is all we have for the washer) I was able to reconfigure my press-fit PEX fittings (so easy!). I also disconnected the gas line that went to the stove upstairs. That was made more difficult by the fact it was one 12′ pipe going from the basement to the second floor. Disconnecting it was easy, getting it out of the wet wall was a bit more difficult. We had Lester, our radiant contractor, disconnect and drain the radiators a couple of months ago, so I was able to just lift those off the wall and move them downstairs. I unscrewed the thermostatic valves and fancy stainless steel fittings and saved them in a bag. These radiators will eventually be in the attic bedrooms, since the other stories will have radiant floor heating.

I turned off the electrical circuits for the second floor and took down the ceiling fans and light fixtures, but I still need to remove the actual BX wire cables strewn through the attic. I reclaimed the outlets (few that there were), which we’d installed new when we bought the house. The whole upstairs only had one light switch (in the bathroom) since everything else was on pull chains and a couple of fan remotes. Honestly, one of the nicest parts of the basement is the normal complement of outlets and switches, since they were in short supply upstairs.

Debris chute

Debris chute

Sarah ordered a big dumpster and it was dropped off in the back yard on Friday. Monday I built a chute out of the extension ladder and some 2x4s and plywood to go from the back door of the second floor down to the dumpster that will make the demo process go much faster. We discovered when we demoed the first floor that balloon frame houses lend themselves to a particular order of deconstruction if you want to contain all the plaster dust and mess. By demoing the ceiling first, all the debris falls into the still-enclosed rooms rather than into the wall cavities and into the floor below. By saving the flooring for last, we prevent (some of) the mess raining down between the subfloor boards. Also, by demoing the ceiling before the demo party, we prevent some of the more dangerous aspects of wanton destruction with large groups of people.

Chute close-up

Chute close-up

I got underway with ceiling demo, starting in the back bedroom and kitchen and working forward. We insulated the attic with blown-in cellulose a few years ago, so there was a lot of fluff shoveling, but the chute is working as hoped. The top of the chute is slightly higher than I’d planned, so I need to lower it a bit, but otherwise it’s a vast time saver over hauling everything down by hand. When we prepped for demo of the first floor we took down all the trim, but in the second floor, at least for the windows, I’m concerned the trim is actually holding the windows in place. They’re all cheap replacement windows and they’re less than professionally installed. We may take it easy on those until we’re ready to replace them. The weather is getting cooler and we don’t want any gaping holes in the exterior walls, let alone the possibility of broken glass and injured people.

I expect to finish ceiling demo tonight, the kids will be out of the house with grandparents for the whole weekend to avoid any noxious dust contamination, and we’ll get this, quite literally, knocked out!

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.

Underground Plumbing Inspection

March 10, 2016 / / 2 Comments

It’s done. The final hurdle in the underground plumbing has been completed. Last week the plumbers installed the final bit of cast iron to connect our epoxy-lined sewer to the existing drain stack. All of the other underground basement plumbing was finished way back in October. This past Tuesday was the sewer lining inspection and today we passed the underground plumbing inspection. We’re finally able to start work on the concrete floor slab.

Underground plumbing

Underground plumbing

To that end we’re in contact with our contractors, but there’s a couple of things we want to finish before the floor goes in. Our plan is to stain and seal the concrete floor rather than put down any kind of flooring. We don’t want to lose a half-inch of head room in the basement to tile, since even with the dig out it’s not all that high, plus it will be radiant-heated, so we don’t want to use carpeting. Because of that, we want to finish some of the work that might make a mess of our nice new floor before we put it in. First, the basement ceiling is currently just exposed floor joists and subfloor, so we’re painting the whole thing with a sprayer. By painting it before we have a floor we don’t have to worry about drop cloths or splatters. We would have done this sooner, but the basement isn’t heated and the weather has been too cold. Fortunately for us, it’s been unseasonable warm recently.

Second, I realized I should do some of the prep on the front window and back door. We’re waiting to put them in until the floor is poured, but I don’t want to be grinding and drilling brick and getting dust all over the floor, so I’ll get as much of the prep done for that as I can. In the case of the door I can’t really install the buck until the slab is in, but I can get the opening smooth and flat and pre-drill the anchor holes. I can put the buck in for the front window and just leave the window out. I’m planning to finish both of these projects by this weekend.

Once they’re done, our next step is to have Mario, our concrete mason, prep the floor with crushed stone, rigid foam, plastic sheeting, and steel mesh. Then Lester, our radiant heating contractor, can put in the PEX tubing loops. Finally, Mario comes back and pours the concrete. We’re hoping that with the underground plumbing behind us we can start making progress again.