Onward...

Welp, it's been a long but short weekend. Took friday evening and most of Saturday off from the house. Friday I just needed the day off, and Saturday my wife and I had some errands we needed to run. Even though we were running around town all day, it was nice to spend the day together. I think it's the first time we've actually done anything together since we've started the bathroom. Actually felt kinda normal :).

Anyway, the re-plumbing job is finally a complete success. I started the day today by draining the water heater. Even tho we now have %95 new lines in the house, the water in the washing machine and sink was still coming out a nice pretty rust color. I figured the only place it could be coming from would be the water heater, so I decided to flush it out. I cut the water off at the main, opened a hot line at the washing machine, attached a hose to the drain of the water heater, and opened the drain valve. Nothing. For some reason, I could not get the thing to drain. After fussing with it for a minute or two I decided there must be a blockage of sediment that was preventing the flow. This was confirmed when I turned the water on at the main to give it some back pressure. Much sputtering, then a nice steady flow. It took about 20 minutes for the water to begin to run clear, but after that, all is well. We now have clean water.

Next order of business was to install a new kitchen sink faucet. I'd completely screwed up the old one when I over-torqued one of the supply hoses reconnecting it. It was a very cheap one, and instead of the internals and connections being cast brass, like the nicer ones, they're made from soft copper tube with threads soldered on. Didn't take much force for me to completely kink it, leading to my hot-side pressure issues at the sink. Long story short, a new faucet installed and everything is rosy again. In fact, it's better than it ever has been. We can run the washing machine, dish washer, and the sink simultaneously with negligible impact to any of them. Nice.

Next up was starting the structural framing. Woohoo! We're actually building now instead of demolishing or repairing. Feels pretty good to be cutting and nailing wood at last.

Anyway, Allen and I spent a little bit of time thinking about how we were going to lay everything out, and measuring. Pretty soon we had a plan together. We're going to use some existing footings to support two new girders on the opposite sides of the room. One will be a doubled 2x8 along the exterior wall, and the other will be a sister to the existing one on the door side of the room. Then we'll nail double 2x6 joists on 16" centers between the two. Should make for a nice strong, stable support for the subfloor and the eventual tile.

Took us a while to get the girders in place. Nothing in the room is level or square so we had to do quite a bit of shimming. We measured for the tops of the girders based on the level of the adjacent floor in the hallway, subtracting for the 3/4" subfloor, the 1/2" durock, 1/4" for the tile, and ballparked 1/8" for the thinset. I think that if I can get the floor within 1/8 of the other floor(up or down), I'll be satisfied. After quite a bit of measuring, levelling, and shimming, the girders were in place and level.




Allen had to run eat dinner with his family so I continued on for a little while alone. I'm going to be using joist hangers to hopefully make it easier to get everything level, and probably make it more sound and secure than my pitiful toenailing skills could accomplish. They seem to be pretty easy to use.



I hung one hanger using a small double 2x6 blank to help me get it positioned so that the joist would be flush with the girder. Then I doubled up 2 2x6's and cut them to length. I was able to hang one end of the joist in the already-hung hanger while I positioned and secured the other, making sure the joist was level. Not too bad. The rest of the joists will be slightly more challenging since they'll not only have to be level themselves, but also level in relation to their neighbors. I can get it really close by using the top of the girder as a reference, since the girders are level, but I think being picky here and levelling them individually will pay off with a nice level floor in the end. Also, the joist I hung was the middle joist. I thought that I'd hang it first, then work toward the walls on both sides. I think I like this idea better than starting on one side and working all the way across the room. I tend to have more success when I minimize measurements taken off of other measurements, which just seems to increase error the father you go. I figure that if my margin of error is 1/16(i wish :) ), and I measure 4 times off of an initial baseline, I could end up with a possible 4/16, or 1/4", error if I'm unlucky and err the same way each time. That's in the significant range. Long story short, running the middle joist first and working from both sides toward the wall, versus starting at one wall and working all the way across, cuts my possible error in half. Sounds good to me :P.

After hanging the middle joist, I was starting to get really hungry so I decided to call it a night. Here's some shots of where we are:





Pretty good progress for today I think. Feels good to actually start the construction phase of the project. Shouldn't take too long to get the joists finished up. After that will be to finish plumbing the room, running all the supply and waste lines to the general area of where the fixtures will be. I have to do that while I still have access, which means before the subfloor. After I have the plumbing approximated, it'll be time to lay the subfloor. I can't wait for that...I think when I don't have to look at the nasty crawlspace and AC jungle, it'll start feeling like an actual room again instead of a disaster area. One day at a time :).

Success!

Whew! All tests during lunch proved to be successful. I spent some time flushing all the lines. Lots of crud needed to be washed out. I guess I'd introduced a lot of dirt to the pipes when I was moving them around connecting everything.

The pressure issues appear to be solved. There's so much pressure now that I completely doused myself a couple of times when i was flushing the lines. I connected the sink, and the washing machine, and all looks great there. I made a mistake when connecting the sink and over-tightened the supply hose and kinked a copper connector on the faucet itself. I think it's impacting the hot pressure slightly...although there's still plenty of pressure. I might see if I can repair it tonight, or just live with it. Also, the "smart" supply hose for the dishwasher that I purchased is acting up. Apparently it has a "flood protector" on it that stops the flow if the hose detects an unrestricted flow(i.e. line was cut or something). I think I tripped it when I was flushing the lines(it wasn't connect to the dishwasher yet), and I can't seem to reset it. The instructions say to turn off the supply valve, disconnect the hose, reconnect it, and turn the water on. This is supposed to reset the valve, but two tries at this had no effect. It's going back and I'll be getting a "dumb" supply hose.

So, we're back in business now. Next up(after making these last final connections and a quick run thru the crawlspace to inspect all my joints) is finish plumbing the bathroom. I think before I do that, however, I'm going to have to do some structural repair work. I need enough of the floor in so that I can measure and see where the tub unit is going to end up, since this determines where I run my supply/drain lines. So I'll probably start by framing in the floor(trying to make sure that the joists don't interfere with any potential plumbing lines). Then I'll install some of the floor along the exterior wall...enough to allow me to frame up that stud wall. This will let me measure accurately enough to determine where the tub unit will end up and where I need to run the drain and supply lines. Once I have this info, I'll be able to finish all the supply lines in the room. Once that's in, I'll be able to install the subfloor, since I'll know where everything need to be cut to allow the plumbing through. Then it's frame the rest of the walls, and closet, run electricity, install underlayment, install tub, drywall, crown molding, tile, final plumbing and install fixtures. After that I'll just have a beer and sleep for 4 days. Sounds like a plan.

Woohoo!

Mission accomplished yesterday evening. Spent another 2 hours in the crawlspace gluing pipes. Everything is finally connected. Didn't run into too many problems, it's just dificult to work in such a confined space and I made a pretty good mess of my hands working with the primer and glue. It'll probably take days for all the stuff to come off. Anyway, everything is connected according to spec.

I made a small change to the design. Nothing major...I decided that, instead of just capping the ends of the 3/4" hot and cold lines and teeing off of it for all the branches, that I would just run the 3/4" straight to the kitchen sink, and connect it there to the 1/2" with a reducer. Everything else will still be connected with tees. I thought that might be a little cleaner and use a few less fittings. No big deal. Here's the updated diagram(it looks a lot different(i hate visio and it's "smart" line connections) but that was the only change.

I was hoping to test everything last night after I'd finished and the glue had cured, but I didn't get finished until 9:30. That would have made it 11:00 or 11:30 before I could turn the water on and test everything. Didn't really feel like staying that late, so I just called it a night. I think I'll run home during lunch and do some cursory testing, and try and flush all the lines and check the pressure. If everything looks ok, and the meter isn't moving with everything turned off(indicating no leaks), I'll leave it on after lunch. Then after work, once it's been on for a few hours, I'll make what I hope will be the last trip to the crawlspace to inspect all the joints and make sure there are no leaks whatsoever. I'll also take that opportunity to finish installing all the hangers for the new lines to clean everything up. I'll also try and remember to check out that AC duct under the living room that hasn't functioned EVER. Hopefully it's just been knocked loose and there aren't any bigger problems there.

I'm trying not to get too excited about the plumbing issue being solved, just in case there's yet another problem that I haven't forseen. Maybe after lunch, if everything looks good, I'll be able to breathe a sigh of relief and let my mind move on to other things. We'll see!

Quick update

Just wanted to post a quick note. Here's a diagram of my new supply design so you can check it out. Thought this might be better than my cruddy descriptions of what I'm doing, and it helps me keep track of it all in my head. Keep in mind this is a conceptual, not physical, layout. It's close to the physical layout as well, but not quite. Your browser also might re-size it to fit your screen so you might have to zoom in to get all the details.

Progress!

Today was quite a productive day. Spent lunch at Lowe's stocking up on all the fittings I was going to need for the water supply lines overhaul. After work I ran over to HD to pick up the actual pipe(HD is MUCH closer than Lowe's, but Lowe's has a better selection of fittings). Was ready to get started around 6pm.

I started in the bathroom. I redid my connection to the the incoming 3/4" galvanized from the street, ran a 10" section of 3/4" onward toward the kitchen, and tapped it with a 1/2" tee to feed the bathroom with cold water.

The other thing I wanted to accomplish tonight was to feed all the other new lines down to the crawlspace. These included the in/out 3/4" lines for the water heater, and the 1/2" supply lines to the kitchen. I prepped all the pieces that would be fed down, and then crawled down into the crawlspace. Allen then fed down the water heater lines from the attic down to me in the crawlspace, and then did the same thing under the kitchen sink. I was a little worried we'd have trouble getting the new pipes run through the floor, but they all went in really easily.

Now I have all the lines in the crawlspace just ready to be glued together. That'll be the main task for tomorrow. I spent the rest of the evening doing as much interior stuff as I could. I finished connecting the new 3/4" lines to the water heater itself, and connected the cold supply under the sink to the sink flex supply that'll attach to the faucet, as well as the icemaker line. I would have done the same for the hot, but I've kinda changed plans for it. I originally was planning on running an individual 1/2" supply from the 3/4" main directly to the dish washer. But everything I've read about it says hooking your dishwasher supply line to the sink hot water supply is ample. I think I'll go ahead and do it this way, as it'll save me a little bit of cutting and gluing in the crawlspace, and save me from having to add a new hole in the floor to run that line. So I'll just tap into the sink's hot line to feed the dishwasher.

So tomorrow will be spent finishing everything up. I'll head down to the crawlspace to connect everything there...I'll extend the 3/4" cold supply from the street and connect it to the line going to the water heater. In this line I'll also put 3 1/2" tees, one for the washing machine , one for the sink, and one for the new bathroom line. I'll connect these the washing machine lines that are already down there, the new bathroom line I've already run, and to the new lines Allen and I dropped this evening. Then I'll extend the 3/4" hot water coming from the water heater, and tap into it with 3 1/2" tees as well...one for the sink, one for the washing machine, and one for the new bathroom. Again, all the lines are already run down to the crawlspace, so all I'll have to do is just connect them. After all that gluing, the only thing I'll have to do before I can turn on the water flow again will be to install the stop valve on the kitchen sink's hot supply, and connect it to the dishwasher. After that I can turn on the water main, and flush all the lines for a minute before hooking the final flex lines to all the fixtures.

If all goes well with that tomorrow, I'll leave the water main on for a little while and then make one final trip to the crawlspace to inspect all the joints and make sure I don't have any leaks. I'll also take that opportunity to install hangers to get the lines up off the ground and just have a nice clean installation. Then we'll have water again, and I'll be able to continue with the bathroom!

Decision

Okay! Finally made a decision. Today I was able to talk to my wife's friend Zach(I hope I got that spelling right), as well as another plumber I'd called this morning. They both said they thought my pressure problems were due to the fact that most of my lines were running through the 1/2"OD soft copper at the kitchen. That size tubing just doesn't permit enough flow to support all the fixtures behind it, which now is the kitchen, the washer, and the bathroom. It just won't work.

So I've decided to just redo the whole system. I think, now that I've fiddled enough with it, that I have a pretty good idea of where all the current lines are going. This helps me feel better about about designing a new layout, since I'm confident that I won't miss anything, or create another bad situation.

Here's the plan. I'm going to connect 3/4" cpvc to the main line at the bathroom. This is the only old 3/4" galvanized that will remain in the system. I'll run that 3/4" cpvc all the way to the kitchen, as the main distribution line. Off of this line, I'll branch a 1/2" cpvc line to bathroom, the front spigot, the kitchen sink, and the laundry room. According to my experts, the 1/2" line should be plenty for each of these individual branches, and the 3/4" main line should allow enough flow to supply multiple branches with enough to run multiple fixtures simultaneously anywhere in the house. Also off of the 3/4" main I'll run another 3/4" main to the water heater. From the water heater will be the hot main, which will be a short stub of 3/4". Off of this hot main will branch 1/2" supplies to the kitchen sink, the washing maching, the dish washer, and back to the bathroom. I showed the design to Zach and he said it looks like a great idea. Should have great pressure to everywhere in the house, and be able to take a shower and do dishes at the same time. It'll be better than it was originally. Woohoo!

Few details to still work out. Running the main lines should be pretty simple. I'll stub off the 1/2" to the bathroom with some valves so I can test the joints and the pressure, and I can come back and do the final supplies there once i've measured for fixtures. I'm going to replace ALL the copper under the house(supplying the dishwasher, kitchen sink, and water heater) with new cpvc so that should be pretty straightforward as well. That leaves only a few things...attaching final supply lines from the new cpvc to kitchen sink(probably new shutoff valves), same with dishwasher supply(probably plastic tubing from cpvc to unit...the existing copper is pretty crimped from pushing the dishwasher in and out), connecting the current lines to the washer to the new 1/2" cpvc tee(i want to actually keep the existing 1/2" copper lines going to washing machinek, since they're replacements for some burst cpvc we had installed a few years ago with no problems since), attaching new hot mains to the water heater(probably need to disconnect existing copper so i know exactly what fittings I'm working with), and lastly, hooking in the existing icemaker supply(1/4" copper right now...i think i'm going to leave this alone and just reattach it to the new cold supply for the sink when I'm finished. I think all of these are easily manageable.

Whew...I feel %100 better now than I did yesterday evening. I have a decent amout of work ahead, but at least I know exactly what I'm doing now. I feel really confident about the new design and I'm psyched to see how it turns out. Tomorrow will probably be spent at least partially at Lowe's purchasing everything. Maybe I'll even be able to get started. I think I'll try and do as much as possible in phases...I'll be putting in valves along the way so that I'll be able to work on individual branches without impacting anything else. Once I get started, I expect it to move fairly quickly, since working with the cpvc is a breeze.

Away we go!

Interesting...

Quick update...

After some advice from a friend of my wife, who used to be a professional plumber, I went home and checked the fixtures in the kitchen and laundry room. As he'd expected, they were VERY clogged with all sorts of gunk...probably a combination of rust from the old lines and dirt I introduced into the system when I ran the new lines. After cleaning the gunk out of the sink faucet aerator and the washing machine supply line screens, I have pressure! SWEET! Not quite as much as I had originally, but what I have now is definitely acceptable. I'll probably disassemble the sink faucet when I get home this evening to see if there's more gunk inside the fixture itself and see if I can increase the pressure a little more.

Unfortunately, however, I still have a problem when I try and use 2 things at one time. When I turn on the sink, and then turn on the washing machine, the sink pressure is reduced to almost a drip. Have to think about this a little more...

Anyway, more good news and bad news. It's starting to look like this might not be as catastrophic as I'd thought. Maybe now I can just concentrate on the kitchen situation rather than trying to redesign the whole system.

Yet more plumbing...

Well, yesterday's work was at least a partial success. I burned a vacation day from work and spent the entire day under the house redoing my supply line joints. I replaced the existing, failed, solder joints with flare fittings.

These are the joints that failed:







Also, here's some detail of that pipe that I was trying to describe as being just oversized enough to not fit my 3/8" copper sweat fittings:



(ignore the dial on the caliper...it's not accurate..the ruler scale is in CM)





And here's what I'm replacing them with:



So I spent a good 2 hours under the kitchen hooking in the new lines and gluing everything up. It's a dirty job, but at least I had a friend to keep me company...



And of course, on my very last joint, I had a small mishap when I knocked over my can of purple PVC primer. Unfortunately it was right in front of my face, so I ended up with primer in my eye. I don't think I've ever made the crawl to the exit that quickly before :P. Only water in the house is some refrigerated drinking water so I had to use that to flush the primer out of my eye. Talk about a brain freeze... Unfortunately it didn't do anything for the stain on my face :P.



Anyway, now that you've had your laugh, I'll continue...

Couldn't really do anything while I waited for the glue to dry, so the dogs and i played some frisbee in the sun(it was CHILLY). This was the first time the dogs have had any frisbee time since we've started the project.







After a couple of hours I was able to turn the water on and test. More good and bad news. Good news, none of my new joints are leaking(not exactly true, but the 2 leaks I have are easily fixable). The bad news is that I still have no pressure. The lines burped and gurgled for about 5 minutes, but no pressure. I fiddled with it for 2 more hours, turning everything on and off and on and off..letting it run, letting it sit closed, everything that I could think of to bleed the lines and get all the air out. It improved slightly, but settled into what is probabaly less than half of the original pressure we had to the kitchen.

So now I'm stumped. I don't exactly know what to do from here. If I knew what the real problem was, I could fix it, but I'm pretty much clueless. The thing that's really puzzling to me is that the kitchen has no pressure. I didn't alter the kitchen lines other than to put in my new tees. I would expect, once the lines have been bled, that the kitchen would have the same pressure that it did before I started. The only thing I can think of is that there's possibly some blockage or debris in the lines. I'm going to disassemble the faucet when I get home today and see if there's anything in there. I'll probably also disconnect the final supply lines to the faucet and see what the pressure there is like. The washing machine is in the same boat, only worse, so I'll probably disconnect and flush it as well.

oddly enough, new lines to the bathroom appear to have more pressure than the kitch does currently. It's hard for me to tell exactly how much pressure they have tho, since I don't have any fixtures in there right now and I can't really eyeball the flow. All I can tell is that it looks like it's flowing slightly more than the kitchen is. I could be completely wrong here tho, so I'm not basing any decisions on this.

Anyway, so now what? I'm looking at a couple of different options. The first, and the one that I would actually like to do, is to just replumb the whole house. I'm worried that the 3/8" copper lines under the kitchen(which is now the "hub") are just too small to support the amount of water needed(although I still can't explain why the kitchen had good pressure with the same lines before). I could create a supply map, run a new mainline into the house, run new distribution pipes, new lines ot the water heater, and new lines to all the fixtures. I feel pretty good that I could handle this. It wouldn't be fun work, but I bet when I was finished EVERYTHING in the house would have excellent pressure. I don't think it would even cost that much. The CPVC I'd use is really cheap, and I wouldn't have to drop 20 bucks here and there at each unusual joint I run into like I'm doing now, since they'd all be new joints. The problem with this solution is the timeline. I just don't think that, with our current living situation, that we have time for that job. I don't want to put the project 2 weeks(and that might be conservative) behind.

The other option that I have is to get some professional advice, or even professional help(haha, I know that's everyone is already thinking!). So I'm on the phone with some local plumbers this morning to see if anyone can come out and give me some consultation. It's entirely possible that I've made some small error in calculation or execution that's screwing me up. In fact, I hope this is the case. Maybe a professional will be able to diagnose what's going on and give me some alternatives. Stay tuned...

Plumbing cont...

Good and bad news. First the good news. I made quite a bit of progress today. I joined the 2 galvanized lines(input and output) in the bathroom with CPVC. I borrowed Allen's hammer drill(gotta get me one of these) and drilled a new hole thru the front brick for the new spigot. This let me mount the new spigot with no problems. I was then able to crawl up to the front, cap the old spigot supply, and glue up the lines running from the bathroom to the new spigot. Now all my new lines are CPVC coming from the kitchen, and everything that I need to meets in the kitchen. As far as this part goes, I'm ready to start measuring and running the new finish plumbing in the room for all the fixtures. Since that part's going to be all new work, I don't anticipate and problems there.

Now for the bad news... After doing all this, and waiting 2 hours for the glue to set, it was time to turn on the water and test the joints. Allen turned on the main while I was in the bathroom looking for any problems. I heard the pipes fill with water, and found no immediate leaks. Then I opened the valves for the new supply lines running from the kitchen to bleed the air out of them and check for leaks there. After a minute or two, water finally started flowing. Lots of burping and spurting, but we had water. After a few minutes, tho, it was apparent that we had a pressure problem. There just wasn't very much pressure in the new lines. Went into the kitchen to check the pressure there, and found the same...low pressure. We've always had good pressure in the kitchen so I took this to mean that there was an overall problem, rather than my fear that the new lines to the bathroom just didn't give good pressure in general. But what was causing the problem? We gave it a few more minutes just in case it was due to more air in the lines...maybe they just weren't completely bled. But after another 5 minutes and no improvement, I decided something was wrong. I discovered the problem when I checked the new joints where I'd tapped into the kitchen lines for the new bathroom supplies. I was able to peek in thru a crawlspace vent and see one of the fittings spraying and dripping water into the crawlspace. Argh. My sweat joints had failed. I think the problem was a combination of the dirty environment where I had to make the joints and just plain rookie technique. In any case, it was apparent that I had to redo these joints. Ugh.

Back at Lowe's, looking thru the copper fitting selection I'd already been thru 5 times didn't reveal any new information. I didn't really like the idea of just simply redoing the exact thing I'd already done. I still don't know exactly what went wrong the first time, so what's saying the new ones will be any better? Time for plan B.

Flare fittings. I've read that flare fittings are at least as good, if not better, long-term joints than sweat fittings. Plus, in my case, I'll need a LOT fewer joints. With the sweat fittings, I had close to 20 joints I had to make, due to the tees, reducers, and threaded adapters I needed to use to connect to the CPVC. Not really surprising that I didn't get every single one of them perfect. The flare, on the other hand, should work out to be nice and simple. The flare joint is nice because I was able to find a fitting that, itself, had a threaded end that will connect directly to a CPVC/Brass fitting. This means that it converts to CPVC earlier in the joint, which makes my life easier. In a nutshell I'll have: existing copper->flare fitting->copper/cpvc adapter->cpvc tee->new supply line. MUCH simpler than my original concotion with sweat joints.

On the docket for tomorrow: Crawl under the house to fit the new joints under the kitchen. Connect bathroom supply to the new line to the spigot. Hopefully that won't take too long and I'll have time to do turn on the water and crawl under the house to visually inspect all the joints. If all looks well, I'll turn off the water and call it a night. The following day I'll turn on the water in the morning before work, then crawl in for a final inspection when I get home. If the joints look good after being under pressure for 8 hours while I'm at work, I'll trust everything and can start focusing on the bathroom plumbing itself. Hopefully I won't have to go under the house for anything else. Oh, while I'm under the house for the final inspection, I'll also use that trip to attach the cpvc hangers to suspend the cpvc from the floor joists for a clean installation. PLUS I'll also take that opportunity to crawl under the living room and fix an AC duct that's been out of commision for as long as we can remember. I hope I remember all this when I'm under there :).

Although we had problems today, I feel like I made good progress. I rectified the mistake I'd made the day before, and I feel pretty confident that we have the layout nailed down. Let's hope these flare fittings solve the problem so I can proceed with bigger and better things.

More plumbing

Sorry for the delayed update. Either I'm working or tired and sleeping :).

I took friday off. Did some plumbing planning, and had a really good idea of what I was going to tackle on Saturday. Went to bed early :).

Saturday we woke up, visited a few plumbing suppliers to get all the fittings I needed, and then spent the rest of the day under the house in the crawlspace. Started with the kitchen. I cut the copper lines supplying the kitchen, added some tees, and ran the new CPVC lines to the bathroom. That took about 4 hours, including one extra trip to HD. No matter how much recon and planning I do, I keep running into unexpected things that cause me to have to alter the plan. In this case, I'd already crawled under the house and measured the copper lines at the kitchen to know what size fittings I'd need to tap into them. Worked brilliantly(with the caveat that I havne't tested my sweat joints yet) for the hot lines. Turns out the cold lines were, for some reason, about 1/32 larger diameter than the hot lines(crazy), which meant that my 3/8 tee wouldn't fit them. I have no idea why they're that size...they're not big enough to be the next larger standard size, so none of those fittings fit. I got luck and found that a "street elbow" of the next larger size fitting fit prefectly. A street elbow has a female fitting on one side and a male fitting on the other, instead of the standard female/female ends. Turns out that what's meant to be the male end worked perfectly as a female for my application. So I was able to rig up a joint using these fittings and some short lengths of the next larger size pipe. It's not pretty but it did the job.

After running the new lines to the bathroom, I switched gears(since I had to wait 2 hrs for the new CPVC joints to cure before testing) and removed all the old galv from the bathroom. I cut the supply line to the bathroom and capped it. I also cut the "output" line that's supply the front outside spigot that's being fed from the bathroom(with the intention of running a new line to that spigot from the new bathroom supply lines). After that, I was able to just sawzall the old galv in the bathroom and remove it. Then I went into the crawlspace again to fit the new line to the spigot. I removed the old spigot, and cut the existing galv supply to it(just to be clean). I ran into a problem, tho, when I went to fit the new spigot. The hole in the brick through which the spigot line runs is directly behind a large 2x8 floor joist that's almost contacting the exterior brick wall. This makes it impossible for me to fit anything to a new spigot inserted into the existing hole. There's just not enough room to work...much less add any additional fittings(i needed to put an elbow on it). So the plan now is to patch the existing hole, and drill a new hole about 2 inches lower which should allow me to clear the floor joist and work on the fittings with no problem.

After figuring all this out, it was time to test the new lines. I'd put valves on the new CPVC lines so that I could leave the water on in the house while I'm doing the rest of the finish plumbing in the room itself. So I opened these valves, and Allen turned on the water at the main. BAD BAD NEWS. No water came out of the new lines, but water DID come out of the "output" line that used to go to the front spigot. ARGH!! Turns out we had it backwards. What I thought was input TO the bathroom was actually output FROM the bathroom, and what I had thought was output to the front spigot was actually input from the street. Big big mistake. Now I have an uncapped line at the spigot that's between the bathroom and the street, AND I have an uncapped supply line to the bathroom, AND I capped off what turns out is the actual supply to the rest of the house. What a huge screw-up. In a nutshell, what I'd done is assumed that both hot and cold were already coming from the ktichen side of the house(I know for a fact the hot is...the water heater is over there). In reality, the street feeds the BR on the way to the back side of the house and the water heater. I'd run a test to confirm my theory, by opening the tap in the kitchen and putting my ear to the pipe in the BR and heard nothing. Then I closed the kitchen tap and opened the spigot at the front...definite sound of water travelling thru the pipes. This reinforced my theory that the supply was kitchen->Bathroom->front sipgot. I'm still not sure why, but that test was completely invalid.

So now I'm looking at a repair job to fix the mess I've made. Here's the plan: I'm going to connect what I now know as the input to the bathroom to the output of the bathroom with CPVC. This will, in effect, make the lines run the way that I had originally thought, and allow me to use the plumbing that I've already done. I'm also going to have to cap off the line to the front spigot, since it's before the bathroom in the lines and therefor gets supply no matter what I do in the bathroom. The new maps is essentially going to be Street->bypass bathroom(my new fix joint),house(water heater/kitchen), bathroom, spigot. I think this should solve the problem, and hopefully I won't have run into water pressure issues. I also thing I'm going to lose the back spigot as well for now. I discovered, when researching the situation after finding out I'd made a mistake, another line running FROM the bathroom, that'd been buried under the mass of AC ductwork. It heads toward the outside of the house in the opposite direction than everything else. I can only assume that it's feeding the spigot at the back of the house, since that's the only thing in remotely the same direction that uses water. I don't mind losing this one, as I'll just tap into the washing machine lines at a later time to fix that problem(those lines are probably 5 feet from the back spigot). Hopefully I'm right about this one, but we're all quickly learning how good my assumptions have been thus far.

Anyway, that's the plan for today. Went to Lowe's Depot today and got all the fittings I needed to make this situation right. I also invested in some pipe wrenches. I wish I had done that earlier...it would have saved me probably 2 hours worth of fussing with these old galvanized fittings. Oh well...living thru the pain makes the benefit of the tools apparent. I don't mind paying for something once I know it's worth it. Wrestling with these galv fittings with my channel locks and pliers was not fun. They're awesome tools and eventually did the trick, but it'll be much easier now that I have the right tools. Hopefully by this evening I'll be able to turn the water back on to the house and be able to use the kitchen and laundry room again. I'll also be able to inspect all my joints to make sure they're water tight. Everyone cross your fingers... :)

Rest day today. Spent the afternoon cleaning up the tremendous mess that's accumulated so far, and pressure washing the junk off of the porch and driveway. At least now the house looks like someone actually lives there again. Tomorrow the plumbing begins(I'm serious this time!).

More on plumbing

Again, not much progress today. Started the day thinking I was ready to purchase a bunch of CPVC and fittings and go to town on the plumbing when I got home from work. The problem was...my truck was still full of debris from the demo. A quick search of Google Maps revealed a landfill not far from the house. A phone call determined that it wouldn't cost very much to dump the load. So I ran to the house at lunch, changed clothes, grabbed my shovel and headed out. About an hour later, I was there. First, the map was wrong...about 10 miles wrong. After I realized I wasn't getting anywhere with the map, I called a buddy, Gino, who lives in the area and got some directions from him. Perfect...only once I got there, I realized I'd neglected to get any cash, and I was pretty sure my debit card would be worthless at the landfill. Eventually, at the 3rd gas station, I found a functioning ATM and got some cash. Headed back to the dump and unloaded. The drive back was much easier, given that I was 0.84 tons lighter.

This evening was spent doing more plumbing research, with a leisurely jaunt thru the crawlspace. I located the kitchen plumbing...soft copper that I'm going to tap into to run the new CPVC. Turns out that the hot water to the bathroom supply is doing the same thing, only it's schedule 40 PVC, which isn't rated for potable water. Hrm. No big deal really, since it'll be removed. So I know where I'm tying in, and I know where to disconnect the existing hot water. No such luck for the cold water, however. That mystery still looms. I need to find where the cold water enters the bathroom so I can disconnect it and finally be able to remove all the old galvanized from the room altogether. After much digging(most of the cold water network is under the ground), Allen finally locates what we think is the supply. I've located what we think is the line running to the outside hose spigot on the front of the house. After some testing, we're pretty sure we've got it figured out. Now that we know how it's running, there are 2 main hurdles. First, the cold water supply line is very old and deteriorated, which might present a problem when I try and cap it. Second, this confirms my fear that the front hose spigot is downstream from the bathroom. This means that when I cut the existing supply line, it's going to shut down this spigot as well, which isn't an option. I might have been able to simply reroute the existing supply to go straight to the line going to the spigot, but I don't like the idea of working with this old galvanized very much. I'm already worried about the simple cap, much less extra fittings to reroute it. So it looks like I'm going to have to just run a new line to the hose spigot. One more thing that I have to do, but I don't see any other option. Oh well...

So it's looking like tomorrow evening will be spent actually doing the work at last. The main tasks are going to be: Go to HD to get all the supplies, tap into the kitchen plumbing, run the new CPVC lines to the bathroom, run a new line from these new lines to the front hose spigot, and then test everything for leaks. Doesn't sound too bad, but every time I say that I run into something unexpected. Let's hope something goes right for once :).

Day 4

Not much progress today. I removed the old subfloor and all of the old floor joists. Not too much work to get all the old wood out. Removing it all exposed what I assume to be the Nexus of the Universe...or at least our air conditioning system. There are so many ducts it's difficult to even walk or have a place to stand.

This also exposed the mess of plumbing underneath the old bathroom. Ugh, I hate plumbing. Not much of it makes any sense, either. I've been thinking that I'll just tap into the copper in the kitchen and run brand new supply lines from there into the bathroom, then just plumb the room with new lines to all the fixtures. I was hoping that this would let me clean all the old galvanized out, by cutting the supply to the bathroom way upstream and just remove all the old pipe. Turns out, however, that some of the supply under the bathroom is buried in the ground, making it difficult to find where, upstream, to cut and cap the line. To make matters worse, for some reason, a cold water line that feeds an outside hose faucet, that I don't want to orphan, runs directly under the bathroom(out of it's way, at that). Before I totally cut off the supply to the bathroom, I have to make sure that the bathroom lines aren't feeding this faucet, or else it'll lose it's supply. Not good. So I basically spent the rest of the night with this look on my face, while Allen and I tried to puzzle it all out:



I suppose I'll spend tomorrow crawling around in the crawlspace mapping the water lines. Hopefully I can figure out enough to be able to successfully cut off the existing supply to the bathroom and run the new lines in. Doing it doesn't take that long...figuring out WHAT to do is the trick :).

Here's a few pics of the current state:







After I get the new supply lines to the room, I should be able to start on rebuilding the floor supports. After that I think I'll be in good shape to finish plumbing the room for the fixtures, which will allow me to put the subfloor in. Once the subfloor is in, and I don't have to look at the nasty crawlspace anymore, it should be off to the races. Wall framing, rebuild the closet, drywall, install shower, tile..woohoo!

Rubble..

Almost forgot...meant to post this pic. This is the remains of the concrete slab that Allen hauled to the curb. What a mess!



Allen also had a great idea that should solve my ceiling quandary...Crown Moulding!

Floor Removal

Well I spent all of Monday thinking about how I was going to tackle this concrete floor issue. I finally decided that(with the help of a borrowed sledgehammer) I'd just beat on it and see how strong it was. Maybe I'd be able to just nibble away at the edge until I'd chipped away the whole floor. HA! HA HA! Get this...If you happened to read Day 2's post, you saw the picture showing the 2" concrete floor I'm referring to. Check out what was REALLY under there:

That's 5.5, count em, 5.5 inches of concrete! The perspective in the photo is a little off, and the shadows are kinda hiding the full thickness(look behind the tape), but believe me, that's 5.5 inches of concrete. Wow. It took about 10 minutes of busting, chiselling, sledging, swearing, praying, and pleaing for me to get enough removed so that I could take this photo. This is clearly not working, so...

"Say hello to my little friend!"

Mr. 5.5" Concrete Slab, meet Mr. Kilti AVR-905 Breaker Hammer. How do you do? Just fine, and yourself? Not bad, not bad at all...

The rental guy at Home Depot told me that this hammer was would remove any slab up to 2 inches. However, I figured that since this slab was suspended, with not much support underneath, it could do the job. It made pretty easy work of it. It was fairly slow going, but relatively painless work. Working along the edges, it cut right thru the concrete with no problem. Allen took care of the crap work, shovelling and carting the debris out of the way as I chiselled, making sure there was room to work. I think in all it probably took us close to 3 hours to remove the whole thing. If I were doing with the sledgehammer, I'd still be in there working.

Here's some pics in various stages of progress:

Finally, down to the 1x subfloor.

Not a bad night's work. Many thanks, once again, to Allen for all the unsolicited help he's already given us. He's taken up the not-so-fun-but-necessary tasks which helps maximize the time I can spend doing other things. I'm %100 sure that without his help, we wouldn't even be half as far as we are.

So next up...There's still a little bit of cleanup left to do before I can start rebuilding. I still need to pull up the subfloor boards, clean up as much debris that's fallen into the crawlspace as I can, pull all the old nails out of the studs, and just clean it up in general. Once I get that out of the way I'll be ready to start rebuilding.

I'm thinking, now that I can see more of the underlying structure, that I'll probably just be rebuilding the entire floor structure. The beams around the room's walls seem to be in great shape, but not so for some of the joists. And those that are still in good shape are laid out rather oddly. On top of that is the fact the the subfloor is recessed about 6" to make room for the rediculous concrete slab. I'll need to raise the subfloor up a good 4" to make the eventual tile floor level with the rest of the house. Also, this huge slab was adding a ton of rigidity to the floor, so now, with that gone, I'll need to be careful to make the new subfloor as stong as possible to reduce flexing and cracking the tile that's going to cover the floor(if I ever get there!). At least we're wrapping up demolition and getting close to the actual construction :).

After rebuilding the structure, I suppose it will be time to tackle the plumbing. Not really looking forward to that, but I don't suppose it will be all that bad since everything is exposed. I think I've decided to remove(or at least bypass) the existing galvanized supply lines and just go with new plumbing in the whole room. Shouldn't be too bad...weighing my options here. Copper, tried and true standard, but expensive. CPVC, MUCH cheaper and I hear it insulates quite a bit better than copper... PEX? Who knows...still researching this.

More fun to come!

Misc

I'm not really digging the way this blog handles its email notification. Apparently it's just sending a copy of the blog post via email, which ends up screwing up the formatting and html in emails is just nasty anyway.

If anyone is annoyed by the emails, just ignore them read the real post here at the blog: http://adventures-in-the-bathroom.blogspot.com/.

The blog should be caught up to where we are now. Future posts will be created as they happen. Sorry to all those who are subscribed to my updates for all of the spam today. Should be better from now on. Again, if you get sick of the updates, please let me know and I'll remove you from the distribution list.

Day 2

Day 2 started with a bang. First order of business was to get the cast iron tub out of the room. Ugh. Our friend who helped us on day 1 was busy today with family coming to town. Not to worry! Another friend of ours, Richard, just happened to be in Auburn for the FL game. Caught him just on his way out of town and to paraphrase his response, he says "Sure, I'd LOVE to come help you move a 1000lb tub!"





After some head scratching, Richard came up with a nice idea of using some 2x4s and a crowbar to lever the tub out of its concrete trap enough for us to musle it into the center of the room, staged for moving out of the room. Then came the fun part. Realizing that we weren't going to be able to carry it all the way to the garage in one shot, we staged up some resting spots with some plywood and 1xs(so setting it down wouldn't scratch the finish). It was rough, but we managed to get it out to the driveway without too much trouble(my back might tell you a different story). Since it was a straight shot to the garage, we employed an appliance dolly and an old skateboard to improvise a cart to roll it the rest of the way. The tub was finally safely in the garage.

The tub skate:

After getting the tub out safely(and recovering) Richard headed back home to Atlanta and lunch with his wife. Thanks Rich!

I proceeded with the demolition of the rest of the room. The goal for day 2 was to have all the walls down to the studs.

Demolition for the rest of the room was all fairly easy. Yank the drywall off of the underlying plaster walls, then remove the plaster itself. Nothing too difficult, just very messy. Even with my keeping the door to the room closed as much as possible, there's still a layer of dust on just about everything in the house. Woohoo :). The toughest part of this job was removing the plaster from the exterior wall. The plaster was applied directly to the brickwork on the wall, so removing that took some effort. Most of it peeled away ok, but the plaster had adhered better in other places making it tough to remove. Our friend Allen helped out a lot by continously hauling the plaster waste outside so that we had room to work.

Notice the plaster on the brick wall.


At the end of the day, we were pretty much where we wanted to be. No more plaster.









Here's a look at the mess we've generated so far:

Plaster rubble:


Drywall, cabinets...etc:


Day 3 - The floor! This one is going to be rough. I have to remove the original tile, which isn't so bad. What's going to be tough is the 2" layer of concrete resting on the subfloor. Tackling that one is going to be a challenge.


Another challenge, when I get to drywall, is going to be the ceiling/wall joint. I'm hoping that I won't have to mess with the ceiling and I can just leave it in place. However, the existing plaster ceiling joint might get a little messy. It looks like wherever two surfaces met, they installed a metal lathe mesh to hold the plaster. I need to remove ALL the plaster from the walls in order for the new drywall to rest evenly on the studs, but I'm afraid that if I remove this metal lathe at the ceiling joint, I'm going to destroy part of the ceiling doing it, which I would prefer not to do. Still trying to wrap my brain around this one. Luckily I have a little bit of time before I have to solve this one.

Ceiling joint detail:


Oh, and lastly, in honor of the dearly departed houseguest, I thought I would post a picture of his final resting place behind the tub. RIP Mr. Opossum. You will not be forgotten.

Day 1 Summary

Added link section to the blog. Added a link to the smugmug picture gallery for easy access to the pictures.

Day 1 consisted mainly of preparation and demolition. Woke up and went to grab some food before getting started. Once again, we were disappointed(read ANNOYED) with the local coffee shop. Apparently Columbus was having a crafts fair downtown, bringing in quite a few people. The coffee place was pitifully unprepared for the extra business so we arrive to find NO food whatsoever, and a line 10 people long. Nevermind. This is not the first time we've walked out. Why do we keep going back!?

Here are a few before pics. Doesn't look so bad now that I'm looking back at them :P.








I started the demolition by working on the formica on the cabinets. Not too difficult to remove. We're planning on going with a pedestal sink and a chifferobe to give us a litte more floorspace in exchange for built-in cabinets. I had originally thought about trying to keep the cabinets intact, in case the next owner wants to put the cabinets back in. But it quickly became apparent that these were built in-place, and it wasn't possible to remove them without destroying them.


No more cabinets.


As you can see, I employed the "stream of consciousness" demolition technique. Whatever I happen to closest to is what I'm working on at the moment.

After getting the cabinets out, I decided to tackle the plumbing while a friend of ours worked on getting up the black and white tiles. In order to still be able to use the water in the house while doing the project I removed all the fixtures and capped the nasty old galvanized. Amazingly, all 5 connections were leak-free on the first try, wow! I think i'm going to end up removing ALL the old galvanized and replacing everything with copper. Should make the installation much simpler, and give us better pressure in the room, since the old galv stuff was insanely corroded. Saw some CPVC stuff at Home Despot also...looks interesting and cheap. Need to do some research to see if it's a viable option.

Taking up the "new" B&W tile exposed what I'm assuming is the original floor tile. It's actually this amazing 3/4" hexagonal marble tile. It's a shame that I have to remove it. I think if it was cleaned up and restored a little bit, it would look beautiful. Another issue with the floor is that the original tile was laid in a 2" bed of concrete. This stuff is going to be a big pain to remove. I'll think about that later :P.

Here's a shot of the original tile. Wish we could just use this, it's amazing.


The rest of Day 1 was spent haphazardly working on the floor, plaster walls, and the closet demolition. I think we made pretty good progress. Cabinets are out, toilet's out, only thing left to remove is the cast iron tub *gulp*. Had to stop at 7:30pm, since Auburn was playing Florida. Coming off of a loss to Arkansas, I had a pretty good feeling about this game. Tubberville has historically been good about rally the troops for the big game. Turns out, after a shaky first quarter, Auburn's defense rallies and throws down on Florida for the big upset. War Damn Eagle!

Here are some pics at the end of day 1: