Plumbing 101

It is a strange fate we should suffer so much fear and doubt… over so small a thing. Such a little thing.

Vacations come in all shapes and sizes. Vacations from work, from responsibility, from work, from certain foods, etc. I had decided to take a vacation from projects for a while to deal with the new Wee One. Yes, that is right. There are 2 now. I told the house that we just needed some time to get adjusted to having the new baby before I could pay more attention to it. But just like most older children when the new one comes home, they pee all over the floor in protest.

4 days after coming home from the hospital with our new bundle of joy, I went to the basement to check on some mouse traps that I set to see if we have any freeloaders living with us. Nothing so far, which is a good sign. However the bad sign was the drip drip dripping that I heard coming from the waste pipe near the sewer line. Upon further investigation I found the source. Not a standard crack from age but a crack because whomever installed this thing decided to use a piece of pipe that they had already started to cut. Yes. Because they started a cut in the wrong spot and decided to still use that segment of pipe, we had a leak. Instead of having plenty of pipe wall to deal with standard corrosion, there was a thin wall of copper keeping the water in. Laziness and ineptitude caused this.

Now yes, the hole is tiny and I could have just sealed it up. But....

Now the old and the new shall become one

As mentioned in other posts, the previous owners loved duct tape. I can see getting confused and using it on ducts... but plumbing? Since this was already a mess and that huge old drum trap was always getting clogged, I decided to just replace the entire line. Also the plumbing isn't vented so I could add some air intake valves while I'm at it. Always best to do it the right way even it it requires more effort that patching. That means ripping out everything from the kitchen and bathroom sinks on down.

Now I haven't done plumbing before. The closest I have come to plumbing is buying a new garden hose. This is a waste pipe though, hopefully no pressurized contents, so I figured it was a great place to start. It really shouldn't be that hard. Now of course I did practice, tested some (1) pipe connections, ran through a simulator a few times to get myself prepped. I've got this.

Once I got the high score I knew I was ready

So I started. This is one of those projects that, like most, I was unsure of at the start and well into the middle. And near the end. Once started though, it needed to be finished. The wife was not prepared to lose access to the kitchen and bathroom sinks indefinitely. Something about needing clean dishes and whatnot.

The demo is the easiest though. All I needed to do was remove some pipes. So remove pipes I did, starting with the duct taped one and then moving onto the fun of cutting through the old metal pipes. What I was not prepared for was the smell. The duct tape joint had a nice collection of filth which had matured well with age.

Who needs proper couplings when you have duct tape?

The smell was tremendous. Only to be topped by the fresh sewer line smell once I cut through that monstrous drum trap. At this point I knew I had to work quickly because I now had an open line at the main sewer pipe and two sinks out of order. I also didn't want that open sewer line to stay open. I've seen Ninja Turtles (not the new one, that one sucks), I know what comes out of sewers. 

Something tells me not all sewers are so well maintained and have inns

With all the pipes removed it really was just putting the new PVC together. I had purchased enough straight pieces and differently angled joints that we just needed to figure out which ones went where. Much like an artist saying that just need to remove the parts of the stone that aren't part of the sculpture, I needed to know which pieces of PVC 'belonged'.

My entire rationalization of doing this project was that I can put together a puzzle and this is pretty much the same. Yes you have to prime and glue the pieces together so you need to do it perfectly, but Perfect is my middle name. 

Lies. Its Ronald.

So I set out all the pieces and dry fit them to make sure it would all work. In the pic above you can see an air intake valve. Neither sink was vented properly which meant lots of noise coming from the drain when water goes down. Also the sewer stink that I was mentioning before, that has a tendency to make an appearance in non-vented sinks. Repairs and improvements all in one! The rest of the afternoon was spent doing a giant white jig saw puzzle.

Doesn't get much easier than this

This project was a lot more measuring and cutting than normal. We really needed this to work correctly so I changed my method of eyeballing and praying. In the end, it actually worked out. I was shocked. The pieces mostly lined up. It only took a little muscle at the end to get the final pipes connected. With that I ran upstairs, turned on all the water and then sat. I waited and waited but no water came out of the pipes. I even checked the next two days and the water is still draining properly. We have even been able to use the garbage disposal since that drum trap isn't there. Now I just need to replace the leaky sink and the downstairs plumbing is all set, until I find the next problem....

Leveled up to master plumber. Koopa, look out.

- The Porter -

Let there be Heat! The absence of Heat shall be called Cold!

It took a week and a day but it is finished. We now have 2 zones of electronically cleaned, humidity controlled hot and cold air coursing through the veins of our house. Fairly good timing too since we have had a few chilly evenings where the Wee One woke up looking a little ice blockish. It was only when I had to chisel him out of the bed that I began to worry.

Bask in the glory of this 100,000 BTU behemoth

What a week it was. My favorite part was when they started ripping out all the old ducting. None of the pictures really convey the message of how poorly designed this duct work was. Firstly it was low, because in a 6 foot high basement we don't need to worry about conserving head space. The second part was that is ran everywhere. Every. Where. All the wheres had pipes. The best part is that the pipes ran directly through the walking corridor instead of against the wall, so you always had to hunch over to get anywhere. 

Artists rendition of whomever installed this originally

Once the crew had fully removed everything I had a brief moment where my basement wasn't horrible. It had space and was brightly lit. The air smelled cleaner and even the massive amounts of termite damage that was uncovered couldn't detract from the glory. This moment ended quickly however as they did have to put in new ducts. There was a slight difference though. They hung them out of the way.... They ran ducts near the edge of the basement or up between floor joists. They had an intelligence to it almost as if they looked at the entire basement, made a plan to effectively utilize space, and executed it. Clearly planning a project is an invention of the past few years otherwise I'm sure the people who installed this monstrosity would have tried it.

One full sized trunk dedicated to one vent..... Efficiency.

Shiny veins and arteries carrying the lifeair of the house

My motto is, if it is worth doing it is worth doing correctly. It is also worth getting overly frustrated with yourself as you try to do things correctly but constantly battle a very distracted mind that would rather play video games and drink beer than do work. Honestly I'm amazed I ever can get out of my own way enough to be productive. Imagine this scenario. You are trying to do a puzzle but each time you pick up a piece there is a random checklist of 5 things that you need to look at and think about before you can place the piece. Also each of the items in the checklist have 10 sub-items that are remotely related to be investigated. And you are thirsty. That is what its like being trapped inside this brain.

And all the while this is going on in there too

I mentioned cold in the title of this post and was intending on talking about 'doing it right and adding air conditioning' in the last paragraph but it kinda got away from me. Also the cat is out of the bag. We have central cooling now too. Why go through all the hassle of adding multiple zones and air cleaning and whatnot if you aren't going to put in cooling as well. I'm also sick of hauling the window units out every year and risking dropping them out the window onto someone walking no the sidewalk Looney Toons style. There are stories of bats nesting in them during the summer too and causing quite the scare when you go to move their new house. I have enough pests to deal with.

Luckily it only looks like a rocket but sounds like the soft whir of air passing over exchange coils

This was my first time working with a contractor too. I was definitely worried too, unknown guys in my house while I'm not there, cutting holes in the house, critiquing the huge collection of left over scrap wood in the basement. They were amazing though! Incredibly polite, hard working and honest. They busted a few things, I'm not going to lie. They broke the valve for the water line to the fridge, they broke a mirror that the wife got 5 years ago and has made me drag around forever claiming she would frame it and hang it up someday. One of them even put a hole in the ceiling in the babies room. Right in the ceiling. They patched it all up though. Except the mirror. They get the bad luck, not me. Although I carted that thing around for 5 years.... so maybe I already have the bad luck.

It was a good thing the guy had square shaped arms or the hole might have been harder to patch

So there it is. We now have a 100% brand new, fully insulated, properly balanced and efficiently installed HVAC system in the house. Something I could never have done myself. They even came back and fixed the water line to the fridge so that it works better than it did before. If you need cooling or heating work done I would recommend giving Cooling Unlimited a call. I would tell you to speak to my guy but he left half way through. Pretty sure I caused him to leave with my thousands of emails back and forth. On top of this all, since it is done correctly, I didn't have to resort to my backup plan for heating the house this winter!

Plan B.

- The Porter -

The Agony of De-Heat

I may or may not have sampled the local wares. Purely for scientific research. Several times. Each night.

So I may have traveled to Ireland for a bit which prevented me from doing any home improvement. You know. Work stuff. Now I'm back though and we have started anew, this time with the heating system. I'm not too proud to admit when I need help and in this case there is no amount of DIY I am able to do to get this heating system done correctly. I'd just as soon light a fire and hope for the best.

We have a team from a great HVAC company, Cooling Unlimited, in this week redoing our entire heating system. Not just updating, but a complete rip out and install. It is very important for this to happen for two reasons:

1) The furnace won't turn on.

2) There is no safe heat on the second floor.

With another Wee One on the way within the next few weeks we wanted to make sure that we had quality heat in our house. Since it is all forced hot air, we wanted quality air as well. No point in breathing 50 years worth of dust and dog hair being cycled through a furnace that is held together by rust and duct tape.

I'm sure I could have just fixed it myself

Duct tape. Duct work. Makes sense to me.

As they are going to be here the entire week working on everything, I figured I would give a few small updates instead of one massive post, because that would not accurately capture the scope of what is happening here. We are taking a poorly installed heating system and ripping the entire thing out for a new, properly sized one that is efficiently designed. This goes back to my promise to this house. 

I will not cover up mistakes. I will never patch something improperly done. I will never route new work around unneeded pipes. I will rip anything out that is bad and build it from scratch the right way.

Which is what we are doing with this heating system. Bye bye duct work that is more duct tape than plenum. So long 100 meters of unnecessary gas pipe. Sayonara closet in the nursery.. Wait what?

Baby clothes are tiny anyway

Yes, because there is no heat on the second floor we had two choices. Run pipes up from the basement or add a second furnace into the attic to handle the second floor. 

Pro Tip: Two furnaces will cost twice as much as one furnace.

So we had to compromise and run the duct work. That cost us half of a closet downstairs and all of the closet in the nursery. Luckily I am use to one project spawning various little demon projects that continue to plague my life. Like those stupid slimes in every RPG ever. You kill it and then two more slimes appear. At best you hope that the two slimes are smaller than the original. Even then they usually group back up into a big slime if you aren't quick.

Slay the project with my +5 hammer drill

I'd better put a new frame on that closet before it gets out of hand.

With day 1 completed we have a host of new vents in the second floor. Those vents will eventually deliver electronically cleaned, perfectly humidified cool or hot air. Right now all they are delivering is a draft from the attic and copious amounts of blown-in insulation. Also bugs. Lots more bugs.

The wife is concerned about rodents getting into the bedroom now. I accidentally said that if rodents are in the attic already they would have had no issue getting into the bedroom before and most likely would head right for the kitchen through the walls. Now I need to buy traps for 'various sized rodents'....

I'm thinking bear traps in the attic should do

The last great update is that we no longer have a maze of gas pipes! The lengths of both unused and improperly connected gas lines have been completely removed! That isn't to say that we just have a basement full of leaking gas now, but a fancy flexible hose gas pipe that is, *gasp*, installed to be as out of the way as possible!!!

This guy got paid by the foot of installed pipe

This guy got paid to do it right

Children, this is why we do things correctly with current technology. Flexible pipe is flexible.

Hopefully the rest of the week goes ok. Only one worker fell through the ceiling in the poor nursery so far, I would like to keep it that way. There are too many holes in this house already for the rodents to come through.

- The Porter -

Covering Up Past Mistakes

One game we like to play here at the Porter House is discovering how previous owners had covered up their 'work'. The most recent one I found was dealing with a shelf in the basement. At some point the foundation had been reinforced with a really nice concrete block wall. It is done really, really well, which put me in a state of both shock and awe. The problem is that they didn't finish the project, again shock and awe </sarcasm>. They got the hard part done and then just called it 'good nuff'. The retaining wall was filled with earth and then covered up with old fake wood paneling....

It is much creepier in person

I have never before seen roots with no plant attached

Pro Tip: Wood rots

Apparently the people who did this didn't realize that covering up damp earth with wood paneling wouldn't end well. This 30 foot stretch of rotten wood causes the entire basement to have quite the nasty funk.

Maybe it was a period thing

Even though we have the water problem solved for the most part, I still wanted this shelf cleaned up to actually be able to store boxes here without them cultivating a mold colony. This meant an hour of ripping up rotted wood and trying to get it outside. Unfortunately rotted wood doesn't really hold together. This project turned into me grabbing handfuls of wood/earth mixture and throwing it outside through the bulkhead. I did not even think to use a garbage bag until writing this just now....

Changing the world one handful of crap at a time

The removal was the easiest part. Now I had a nice stretch of dirt that I could use either as a cave mushroom garden or cover it with concrete. I chose concrete mostly because I'm not sure what I would do with cave mushrooms.

We are familiar with my past run-ins with concrete, so I decided to buy new bags that would cure properly. Off I trotted to the home improvement store to buy a bag of concrete. A couple bags should be fine right?

Wrong.

Pro Tip: Measure how much space you need to cover with something before buying the covering stuff itself.

Luckily for me there was a little sign above the bags of concrete saying how many bags would be needed for different size surfaces. I was still guessing but the sign said about 8 bags would cover 10 square feet, so I went with that. Interestingly the 60 pound bags were a tenth of a cent cheaper per pound than the 80 pound bags.

The guys at the home improvement store got upset when I  reenacted this...

My poor Altima did a good job of bringing 500lbs of concrete home in the trunk. Barely even whined getting on the highway. Getting the concrete in the car, out of the car, then into the basement was a different story. I am pretty sure this is the exact reason why the project was never originally finished.

Now that I had all the concrete down cellar and the hose through the window, I was ready to mix. Mixing concrete is hard work, even with the super mega mixer attachment I was using.

I'm still shocked that anyone can buy these things

Shortly after I finished with this project I remarked to the wife that concrete sets quickly. I knew this in my head but I still thought I would have plenty of time in between each bucket. Again, I was wrong. Halfway through mixing my second bucket I noticed that the first pile had already started to harden. This is when the panic set in. Now I began frantically mixing up buckets of concrete and then running to the shelf to pour them. Once I had enough poured to cover several feet of shelf, I used a piece of wood I found to try and smooth it out.

Professional tools for a professional job

This process went on for only an hour but felt like an eternity. Due to the badly done ductwork you can only walk hunched over in the basement. Walking bent over at a 90 degree angle and carrying 100lb buckets of concrete was no fun. In retrospect it was only 8 total buckets but it was still horrible and painful. Whine whine whine.

Amazingly I had purchased exactly the right amount of concrete. The last bucket filled up the final corner with just enough spare to cover the few spots I had missed. This is usually the spot in the home improvement shows where they have a montage of people smoothing out the concrete so I wasn't exactly sure to do it. I ended up using that same piece of wood from earlier and walked around hitting the concrete with the flat side. I think it made it smoother but I really don't know.

It worked well for this dude

I didn't bother cleaning up. I was covered with mud and concrete, water from the busted hose, spider webs, who knows what else from down there, and was tired. So I just left a bunch of empty bags of concrete and piles of concrete dust everywhere. However I did go back down the next day (not to clean up) and was shocked by the lack of stench. It seems like covering up the dirt and removing all the rotted wood was enough to stop the smells from wafting up like so many spirits during a raise dead ritual.

Ignore the hole in the corner of the foundation...

I should have put a fake skeleton in the dirt underneath

Now that the shelf is mostly cured I am considering going back down with some concrete resurfacer to smooth it out. In the mean time though, I have a new shelf that I can store stuff on that won't rot away on me anytime soon!

- The Porter -

Gutter Check

Just a quick update on the gutters. I believe they have solved the issue of water in the basement. It rained the other day and when I left for work I noticed the following:

Now I have to build irrigation to keep the moss alive

The great levee holding back the tides

That strip of dry land is the difference between a musty damp basement and one that is dry and still slightly smelly. Anyone who is having water issues in their basement should invest in a good gutter system for your house as the change is quite dramatic.

I can't believe it. Something actually got better. 

It is beautiful.

Now that we have fixed the water issue we need to fix all the issues the water issue issued us. Gesundheit.

If the gutters hadn't worked I was going to hire this guy

- The Porter -

My Mind is in the Gutters

Just filling up the hot tub

*Insert waterfront property joke here*

In the, what seems like, never ending battle to keep water out of our basement we have finally rectified the biggest cause of the problem, getting gutters installed. Our roof is probably 1500-1700 square feet and for the past 200 years, when it rains, water is just washing directly off it and down to the foundation then into the basement. When we purchased the house we were told of 'minor seepage during heavy rain'. That minor seepage turned into the basement filling with water whenever a weather reporter thought of precipitation.

This level of water would usually occur within 15 minutes of water pouring forth from the heavens. After a serious deluge a third of the basement would be standing water. I can only imagine that if we had several days of rain the house would just lift off the foundation and float away, conveniently giving me easy access to repair the rotted sill plate.

For Sale: One barely used luxury cruise liner. Minor seepage in the hull.

As you can tell from previous posts, I have no problem trying to DIY my way through projects that are generally considered as 'leave it to the professionals'. In this circumstance though I decided to hire out. Yes I could have purchased the kits from the home improvement store and done it myself. Those only come in 10 foot sections though and when you have 140 feet of roof sides, that is 14 more leaky seams than I need in my life. That is where the seamless gutters come into play. Unfortunately I was at work, but I hear that a truck pulled up and just shot out 140 feet of solid aluminum gutters in about 5 minutes. The word 'extrude' was used and that makes it all worth it.

You can see the slight bend in the middle that matches the house

The interesting part about using professionals is that they show up with more than one person and those people know what they are doing. How novel. 

It isn't as interesting as watching me do a project. Generally I get halfway through something and am holding up my 'project' and then need a tool that I probably don't even own. At that point I am trying to stretch and reach the closest item that now becomes exactly what I need to finish. The saying goes 'When all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail'. My saying is 'Whatever problem you have can be solved by the closest thing to you at the time'.

These poor workers had no idea they were going to be working on the Porter House. They probably woke up the morning and said to themselves 'I am going to get to work, install some gutters, have my lunch, clean up, go home, and be satisfied with my life.' No no no no, that isn't how things work around here. They told me that they needed to do some 'slight prep work' before they hung the gutters. This prep work lasted about 3 minutes before they were battling several nests of angry bees.

The bees had overheard that we were coming and had prepared for battle

This was the first thing they had to deal with. If I got to work and the first thing I needed to do was try and fight off a swarm of bees just to get to the office I would go home and call in sick, or just quit, I don't know.

After quelling the uprising they also had to chase out a bird that had nested inside some decorative trim and close it up. I'm sure the bird had squatters rights but I doubt it will be able to file a claim. 

It really isn't as bad as it looks. That is what I told them at least.

Totaling up, their 'prep work' lasted most of the day and included fighting bees, making a bird homeless, cutting away warped facia board, fixing the reason the facia was warped, sealing the facia with aluminum, fighting more bees, and more things that I can't even imagine. It was so much work that they only were able to hang one of three sets of gutters on the first day, no downspouts.

They were really good about it though, showed up the next morning and finished everything up. We now have diverted all the roof water away from the foundation. We even had a 24 hour rainstorm and the basement stayed dry! Apparently all Nixon needed was some gutters and he would have been set.

la Fin

- The Porter -

Fire in the Hole! - Part 2

When we last saw our heroes they had vanquished the evil Pellet von Stovensen. However in their haste they laid destruction to the village Stovensen was terrorizing. Now comes the part of movies that no one ever mentions, cleaning up after the wanton carnage of battle. The tax rate in Metropolis must be astronomical.

Behold, I have saved the city from certain annihilation!

However in the real world we need to clean up the messes we make. Some might say that if you didn't create messes in the first place you would be fine. I say you can't make an omelette without destroying your fireplace first. With the massive hole in the back of our newly freed fireplace it was time to learn how to lay bricks effectively.

Good enough

Our first challenge lay in the fact that sometime in the history of this fireplace someone thought it would be a good idea to paint it black. Not entirely black, just around most of the middle leaving scorch marks on the other bricks. With the bricks that are left it is going to be very apparent that I have patched a hole. Paint stripper is clearly in my future. Before we can get to any of the fixing I needed to get rid of the old flue pipe. From what I have seen so far I have no idea how this is attached to the chimney, if at all.

Father Christmas has a rude surprise in store for him

You can't see all the way up to the top so I didn't want to just start yanking on the pipe. In the event that it is attached I'm not so sure the dust and spiderwebs holding this chimney together would be happy with me tugging on it. I had to be very careful because moving the pipe even slightly caused a shower of soot to come out and lots of rattling from the chimney. It was also very heavy and awkward.

I tried loosening the connections for the flex pipe to see if I could remove it one section at a time. This process included me sticking my arm all the way up and reaching the joined section with a screwdriver then trying to pry the sections apart. Since it was difficult to see I ended up just hitting the section with the screwdriver a bunch. I had not expected this to work.

If you look closely you can see that there are rivets holding the flex pipe onto part of the straight pipe. Someone went through a lot of effort to join the pipes together like that. Upon striking the pipe I found their resolve did not last very long. A joining sleeve was 110% securely attached to the flex pipe and then they just slid it into the straight pipe. Nothing actually holding the pipe and sleeve together other than dust and the dark arts. A couple good whacks and the flex pipe came down on my leg while the straight pipe wedged itself into the corner, thankfully taking the time to shower me with soot and rodent poo.

I covered the end of the straight pipe and set it inside the chimney on a ledge where there was once a brick. Not sure how the brick was removed since no human could reach it. Maybe brick gnomes were stealing them, who knows?

At this point I think it is safe to use

Unfortunately all the bricks that were painted black were not to be found. I'm sure they didn't survive the removal process so I was going to make due with the bricks that were holding the old stove up. First I needed to knock out the half bricks that were shattered so that I could replace the void with full size bricks spaced properly. This was an hour spent with the Wee One handing me chisels and saying 'Helpa, Helpa' while I tried to contain the clouds of mortar dust.

At this point things were going crazy so there are no further 'along the way' photos. The floor was covered in soot and mortar pieces, the Wee One was grabbing shards of brick to put in his tractor, I was choking on 200 year old dust. It wasn't pretty but we finally got the area prepped for repair.

Pro Tip: Soak your bricks before you lay them.

The above tip is pretty important depending on your brick type. My bricks were made out of what can only be described as hard sponges because as soon as I put mortar on them it dried up faster than a Nazi drinking from the wrong chalice. Or some vague joke about dry towns during Prohibition. 

See how happy the protesters are? They didn't want eternal life, just a decent pint.

Once I got into the swing of it the process started to work. I would dunk a brick in the bucket of water, slop mortar around the general area that I wanted to put said brick, then squish the brick into place. On the DIY shows them make it look so easy to lay brick and it actually is, unless you care about things like being 'level' or 'properly sized'. That type of tomfoolery is for contractors, not me.

With the final brick in place I fixed up around the edge of the fireplace as well. There was a nice space in between where previous owners of the house stored dog fur and cobwebs, but we have enough storage already so I decided to seal it up.

There comes a point in most of my projects where I just lose it and start doing whatever it takes to finish. This point came with filling in the edges of the fireplace. I couldn't fit the trowel in the space properly and started making a mess so I reverted to caveman technique and just used my hands. A few minutes of splattering around with mortar and everything was done. After the mortar started to set I was able to use a wire brush to scrub up all the extra mortar and detritus scattered around the work site and vacuum up all the remaining bits.

Pro Tip: Don't use your house vacuum to clean up mortar.

Just need to find some Floo Powder and getting to work will be a snap

Not too bad for an evenings work in my opinion. I have now restored the fireplace to some of its former beauty. After poking around I found 2 pintles attached into the fireplace. It looks like there was an old fireplace crane installed when it was originally built. It is very disappointing that I haven't been able to find the crane anywhere and I'm sure someone just tossed in the rubbish. Those were custom made to size and have to be installed while you are building the fireplace. There is no way I am ripping the pintles out, so now I have to scour the antique stores for a properly sized replacement. Either that or contact my local blacksmith to forge one for me. Lots of work for a small decoration but who doesn't love antique cooking tools?

- The Porter -