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 -