Unconnected Plumbing

In my foray to the basement I have started to notice that there is a lot of plumbing in this house. Not because we are overwhelmed with bathrooms and various gas/waterworks but because the old plumbing is still there hanging out. Like that friend from college who was always in your room. Whomever updated the water line to copper decided that the old main line was too authentic to remove, so they disconnected it and then built everything else around the old pipes.

This is one end of the pipe

The is the other end. Maybe the warning tag scared them.

Now this probably would not bother most people. It is one run of old pipe probably 10-12 meters long. The issue is that everything else is built around this extra pipe. Ducting is lowered, copper is rerouted, gas pipes go in circles. It looks like the people in charge of the Big Dig plotted the layout in my basement; or possibly the government in charge of Mushroom Kingdoms infrastructure.

Obviously Plumbers do very well in this society

One of the big things I will be outsourcing is the updating of our heating system. The issues surrounding that upgrade will be the feature of a future post. The main thing to know is that 'Winter is Coming' so we need heat. Since we need to update everything I would rather not leave useless pipes dangling around. So I did what any red-blooded American male would do and bought a new tool. In this case it was just a heavy-duty metal cutting blade for my reciprocating saw.

Like a hot knife through galvanized pipe

After clearing the space in the basement I went to work. This will be another common theme in all my projects: "I have never done xyz before", in this case cutting pipe. Unlike most of my projects though, this was easy and worked properly with no injuries to me or the house! I don't own any protective glasses currently because my regular glasses have kept my eyes safe so far. However cutting through the pipe created a small amount of sparks and flying debris. So I just closed my eyes, turned my head and hacked away. Safety first!

There was almost an injury though. One thing to keep in mind when cutting these old heavy pipes is that whatever is being used to attach them to the ceiling may not be strong enough after you start cutting. The first section of the pipe came down very close to my head. I can only assume that had it hit me I would have died down there, alone and covered in mud and bugs.

I survived though and was able to make the few cuts needed to properly remove the pipe. Then hacked it even further to easily maneuver in the close confines of the basement. Now I have a nice pile of old pipe that needs to be taken to the scrap yard. The more time I spent in the basement the more I realized that I need to rent a dumpster and clean out all the old materials left around. These pipes can now be added to the mass of detritus that needs to go away. 

That is $0.57 of scrap which I consider profit

This is the first set of pipes that needed removal. The next set is the gas piping. We have gas pipes that run the length of our house, loop around, come back halfway, loop again, around the chimney, and back just to get to the water heater. That's almost 25 meters of pipe to get to a hot water tank that is only 7 from the gas meter. Finally even more unconnected pipes. Can't wait to get this all removed and re-plumbed properly.

If you look closely you can see that the left 2 pipes aren't even connected

- The Porter -