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 :).