Tag: PVC

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.

Basement Bathroom Ceiling

July 1, 2016 / / 0 Comments

We’ve been so busy that I’m falling behind on blogging! With the inspection behind us, the next order of business was to install the bathroom exhaust fan ventilation. I had done some reading and decided that the best way to do this was to use PVC pipe, as opposed to the galvanized metal ducting that is typically used. The ducting can leak if there’s a lot of moisture condensing unless the mastic and taping are perfect. Even if they are, if it isn’t perfectly wrapped in insulation water can condense on the outside of the duct. On top of that, all the moisture can mean that even the galvanized metal will start to corrode and rust over time. PVC pipe, however, is impervious to these problems. You slope the pipe to the outside, so that any condensing moisture drains out. Since this is in the basement ceiling, it’s a straight shot between two joists to the outside wall, at least until it gets to the rim joist.

Cutting through 8″ of solid wood
Silicone caulk is your friend
Connection to fan
Pipe installed and secured

In most houses, a rim joist is 2x dimensional lumber, the same size as the joists, running around the outside perimeter. Cutting a 4½” hole is just a matter of a hole saw. However we have a balloon-framed house where the rim “joist” is more of a rim “beam”: a 6″ high, 8″ thick wooden sill that sits on top of the brick foundation. The floor joists are notched into it and the wall studs sit on top of it. Getting through this was going to take more than a hole saw that would bottom out in less than 2″, and specialty bits were very expensive.

Instead I pulled out my cheap, trusty Harbor Freight reciprocating saw. Instead of a nice round hole, I cut out a 4½”-wide block, then cut a round hole through the sheathing and siding. It took a long time, and I actually took a few breaks to keep the saw from overheating. It would have gone faster but I only had one dull blade that was long enough. The rest was easy: I cut the pipe to length, used silicone caulk to seal it to the bathroom fan, and put a cap on the outside. We need to use some canned foam to seal around the hole in the wall.

Leveling with sistered 2x4s
Crazy leveling in corner
Bathroom ceiling leveling

Next up was leveling the ceiling. The floor joists were of various heights, partially because they’re old and partially because in this section I was still working out the best way to level the floor above. I screwed 2x4s to the sides of the joists at the lowest level. I wound u having to add blocking along the top of one wall, because the ceiling was now lower than the top plate. I ran into some further challenges on the other side, having to cut down 2x4s on the table saw so they’d fit in some confined spaces and adding some ½” plywood in another spot, but at the end I could put a level to it that didn’t wiggle, so I knew drywall would work.

One bay
Two bays
Three bays
Four bays full

After that was done I was on to insulation. We’re insulating between floors for a few reasons: sound proofing, fire resistance, and to keep the in-floor radiant heating in the floor above instead of in between the floors. I picked up a bunch of Roxul Safe’n Sound insulation and installed it in the area above the bathroom. For the time being we’re not installing it in the rest of the basement ceiling because we will still need to run plumbing and electrical up to the other floors, but the bathroom ceiling is getting drywalled, so this is the only opportunity. With that done, Sarah and I put up moisture-resistant fire-code drywall.

Bathroom ceiling drywall
Bulkhead drywall

Once the shower surround is in and the rest of the drywall is done we’ll start mudding and taping. We got some more water in the basement, so we also have some additional downspout modifications to perform along the side of the house. It feels good to be back at it and getting things done!

Basement Back Door Trim and Light

May 21, 2016 / / 0 Comments
Caulked back door

Caulked back door

I installed the basement back door in March. Once the floor was set up and the walls were framed Percy, our electrician, came out to finish the basement electrical. One of the items on the list was the back door light. In order to get the electrical run properly we decided to finish the trim on the back door. I started by caulking all of the seams around the framing to ensure a good air seal.

Back door trim

Back door trim in progress

I bought PVC trim, because I don’t want to have to do extra maintenance once the house is done. I debated scribing the edge against the brick, but ultimately I discovered I could use the angle grinder with the masonry disk to remove both excess brick and excess PVC. The door is recessed in the wall because the floor slab doesn’t come up to the front edge of the wall. Because of this, our rim joist (which is 6″ x 8″) was exposed, so I needed to trim that as well. The initial electrical was just a piece of conduit, but we wound up with a standard mud ring on a 4″ box. I used the sunken PVC screws with caps, but the color didn’t quite match. We’ll be painting over this anyway to prevent UV fading.

Trim installed

Trim installed

The biggest challenge was the light fixture. The first one we bought didn’t fit because the back box didn’t fit inside the recessed area of the trim. The second light I ordered wasn’t the same size as the specifications, so it hung down too far (the door swings out). We’ll save that one for the first floor. Finally, after a lot of searching for something that didn’t stick up, didn’t stick down, and had a small enough base plate, the third light I ordered fit (if just barely). It’s a barn style light that I put an outdoor-rated LED bulb into.

Light installed

Light installed

We’re pretty happy with the end result. Having an actual outdoor light that works on a light switch is a bit of a novelty for us. The last outdoor light we had was a flood on the back porch (on the second floor) that we didn’t use much. The three different shades of white are a bit irritating, but we’ll get to that eventually.

It works!

It works!

You can see a sneak peak of some of the plumbing and electrical work that’s been going on. In this photo I’d caulked the left side but not the right (it started raining). I’ve since finished it up, but we still haven’t painted. That will probably wait until I’ve trimmed the rest of the basement windows, and possibly until we’re siding the rest of the house.

Unexpected Plumbing, Part 3

August 26, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Saturday we had a bit of a whoops. We had been working on sistering floor joists as part of the wet wall reframe, and hit a stopping point due to an ordered part not being in yet. It was getting into the evening and we had dinner plans at seven. I figured one quick last thing before we wrapped up would be to install a plug in the smaller drain, where the first floor kitchen sink had originally been.

Drain with tee and elbow

Drain with tee and elbow

It was as simple as unscrewing the existing galvanized line from the cast elbow and putting in the plug. I braced the pipe while Mike unscrewed with the pipe wrench. We first started turning it at the tee, but the pipe wouldn’t clear the floor, so we decided to loosen it at the elbow first. That’s when the tee abruptly cracked.

Broken tee

Broken tee

Crap. The cast iron was completely rotted, most likely due to people putting the wrong stuff down the kitchen sink for too many years. Now we had a dilemma. We needed to fix it quickly, and I didn’t have a coupling for the PVC pipe that the cast iron transitioned to directly below the tee. I did, however, have a brand new, 10′ length of PVC left over from the water heater venting. We measured and realized that not only would it fit, we could also resolve a long standing issue in the basement. The 2″ PVC drain went directly into a 3″ PVC drain in the floor that was cracked. It also had several capped branches on it, all of which could be eliminated.

Basement connection

Basement connection

Check out that beauty! They had put on a side drain for the tub, another side port that required water to travel up for the basement kitchen sink, and the gap where the smaller pipe went into the bigger one was filled with Great Stuff foam that bubbled out every time we ran the dishwasher. Mike ran to the hardware store to buy a reducing coupling and I cut off both the cast iron tee and the top of the 3″ PVC pipe, pulling out all of the existing PVC.

Much better!

Much better!

Mike got back and we installed the reducing couple and fitted in the new 10′ PVC pipe. With a few inches cut off at the top, we reused the rubber couple to join it back to the cast iron going up to the upstairs kitchen sink.

Rubber couple

Rubber couple

Despite my warnings not to use the sink, Sarah managed to run the kitchen faucet while I was standing under the open pipe and then later poured out part of a 2-liter of pop (fortunately I wasn’t under it the second time). She apologized for forgetting and said she was just hungry. We did make it to dinner, albeit a little late; the sushi was really good!