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.