Category Archives: Plumbing

May 06 11 comments
Plumbing, Repairs

Unclogging a bathtub drain

About once a year the bathtub drain gets a little slow.  If I ignore this problem, unfortunately it does not seem to go away, it only gets worse.  We end up taking shower baths, which is really annoying, at least to me.  So, once a year I venture into the basement to unclog the beast.

bath tub drain below the floor

bath tub drain below the floor

Because I am the one who installed the bathtub, I am the only one to blame if it is difficult to remove the drain to unclog it.  I think I had good intentions here, but they kind of got buried in the pipes for the solar hot water system.  Anyway, it is not too bad, just a little bit of reaching.  When I removed the trap I stuffed a rag into the sewer line to prevent gas from seeping into the basement while I cleaned out the various pieces.

Fortunately all of the drains are plastic and come apart with little effort.  A pair of slip joint pliers is all that is needed.  In fact, most of the connections are hand tight.

clogged up bath tub drain pipe

clogged up bath tub drain pipe

As I suspected, my wife’s long hair is the culprit.

more hair in bath tub drain

more hair in bath tub drain

Lots of culprit.  I sprayed each part out with a high pressure garden hose and wiped the inside with a rag.  Where the P trap meets the 2 inch drain there was some junk too, I cleaned that with a rag.

Once all the parts are reassembled I ran a little water into the trap to check for leaks and prevent any sewer gas from seeping into the house.

While I was at it, I cleaned out the bathroom sink as well.  This fixture had been draining a little slowly lately.  Same situation, hair.

Took about a half an hour to do and it is a little bit smelly and dirty or disgusting if you think about it too much.  Plumbers charge a lot but they earn their money.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Feb 21 7 comments
Plumbing

Installing a deep sink in the basement

Anyone that know me knows that I am a great advocate of reusing things. We throw a lot of stuff out in this country.  Some of it really should be trashed, however, a great deal of what we throw away is still useful to somebody. To that end, when a friend of mine was cleaning out an old defunct restaurant and came upon some old kitchen equipment, I thought I would take a look.

Low and behold, there was a perfectly good stainless steel deep sink. This deep sink can no longer be used in food service because it has welded seems which can harbor germs. However, it would be perfect for a general purpose deep sink. Best of all, it was free for the taking.  We may not need a deep sink in the basement right away, but, as my lovely and talented wife pointed out, it would be a great place to clean paint brushes.

The sink itself was quite dirty, caked on grease and gummy black gook on the sides, back and all around the faucet.  Mmmm, makes me want to eat out more often.  It took several hours with a scotch bright pad, hot water and Comet to get it to an acceptable level.  Even then, I think I will be cleaning again once it is installed.

Old washing machine hookups

Old washing machine hookups

In our basement, there is an old washer dryer hookup. I long ago removed the electrical feed for the dryer. The waste drain for the washer was cut out when we installed the 3 inch PVC drain during the kitchen move, which leaves these two spigots on the wall that go nowhere. That, it turns out, is the perfect location.

deep sink

deep sink

First thing I did was remove the two old washer spigots and replaced them with 1/4 turn ball valves.  I soldered everything with non-lead solder, as required by the plumbing code.  For more on soldering check out “Plumbing part II, soldering“  Always install shut off valves on a sink, it makes life easier if faucet repair work or replacement is needed in the future.

1/4 turn ball valves

1/4 turn ball valves

I rebuilt the old faucet that came with the deep sink, all it needed was new washers and a new valve seat for the hot side.  The new valve seat is not at all surprising as the faucet was hooked up to city water for at least ten years.  The chlorine in city water often eats away at brass and causes soft brass parts to crumble.

I drilled through the upper part of the back splash so I could rout the pipes down to the faucet and still push the sink all the way to the wall. I don’t know what alloy steel this sink is made from, but it is pretty hard, it took quite a while to drill through with a 1 1/8 inch hole saw.  I was using the drill on slow speed so I would overheat the hole saw and ruin it.

deep sink installed

deep sink installed

I when connecting the faucet, I used  unions on the hot and cold lines so I can easily move the sink if needed.  I used 1 1/2 inch PVC waste drain pipe for the sink drain.  Since it is below the sewer line to the septic tank, I had two options; I could a) install a catch basin with a pump to pump the waste water up to the sewer drain, or b) since it is gray water, empty it into the sump and let the sump pump remove it out into the yard drain.  I choose the (b) option because I don’t think I am going to use this sink all that much and it is an approved method for gray water in my town.  Other municipalities may have different rules.

After all that, I turned the water on, and as they used to say in the Krylon Spray Paint commercials, “No runs, no drips, no errors.”

All in all, a good Saturday project.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Jan 22 4 comments
Plumbing, Tools

Frozen pipes, not mine

What a mess! Fortunately for me, the frozen pipes in question belong to my employer and not myself.  Much to their chagrin, the continued sub zero weather (-1 on Tuesday, -3 yesterday) has taken it’s toll on an empty floor of a commercial building that they own.

No less than 7 burst pipes since Monday. The problem is, it is a 230 year old stone structure with numerous drafts blowing into the basement, around windows and various other openings. Rats, it seems, chewed a hole through a boarded up window letting copious amounts of cold air into a disused kitchen.

Needless to say, I have been supervising plumbers, electricians, carpenters and clean up crews and I must admit, I am getting a little worn out from standing inside sub freezing, dark, dank, wet old buildings.

One thing that I have been suitably impressed by is the Ridgid ProPress crimping system.

Ridgid propress RP300

Ridgid propress RP300

This tools basically does away with the need to solder. In a situation where all the pipes have water in them, some still have ice, this tool save hours and hours of work. In order to solder or sweet pipes, all of the water needs to be drained out so the pipes can be heated. Several of the pipes still had ice, which would have melted causing water to run over the repair area, cooling it off and making it impossible to solder.  With the propress, the burst area is cut out and replaced, with a new section or cap being crimped in place.

The only downside that I can see is the expense.  The battery powered propress tool and 6 jaws runs about $3,000.00.  This is a little pricey for the average home owner, however, for my next solar installation, I’ll be picking one of these bad boys up.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Jan 16 7 comments
Plumbing, Weather, Well

Minus 11 and counting

It was cold last night, so cold I could hear the boards on the deck cracking as they froze. With the snow squeaking underfoot, I checked the thermometer on my way out the door for an early morning emergency call, -11° (F) it read. It may have been colder.

I was laying awake last night worrying about the pipes. We had a pipe on our heating system freeze a few years ago.  It had a very cold draft blowing on it all night and I woke up to discover our bedroom was about 35°.  I was able to heat up the frozen section and get the water moving before it burst, but I must admit, I was a bit lucky in finding the frozen spot and applying the right amount of heat to it without burning down the house.  The drafty spot has been fixed.  Now I am more concerned about the well water supply pipe.

I buried it 48 inches deep (or deeper) except where it gets close to the house. There it is about 36-40 inches deep. That is because it comes into the crawl space, which is only 48 inches deep itself.  I had to come up a few inches to get away from the footing.  I worry that with this really cold weather, the frost level may get down to that depth, in which case, we are screwed.

Therein is the problem with do it yourself.  If something goes wrong, there is nobody to call, no insurance claim, only that sinking feeling that something will have to be done over, yet again.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Jan 06 1 comments
Plumbing

Changing the Potasium Permanganate bottle

I posted once about our iron well water.  Basically, without a good filtering system, our water would be an orangish brown color.  Lots of Iron, everyone around here has it.

To get rid of the iron, most people use a Culligan water softener.  I don’t like “soft” water, it tastes salty to me.  I also don’t like the way if feels in the shower, like you can’t rinse it off.  It sort of feels like a coating of slime or mud.  Ick.  In addition to that, it seems relatively expensive to pay for the Culligan Man to come out and load all that salt into the water filter every three months.

Since I am not most people, I looked into other ways to get rid of the iron in our water.  I decided on a combination sand/green sand filter.  The sand filter is just that, a sand bed that traps the larger particles and holds them until the sand be gets backwashed.  The green sand filter uses Ion Exchange, in other words, it oxidizes the iron into larger iron oxide molecules, then runs it through a sand bed that traps the particles until backwashed.  I have both filters set to backwash once a week on different days.   It works amazingly well.

So well in fact that we forgot it was there.  Until recently that is, when the water began taking on a rotten egg odor again.  Mostly the hot water in the shower.  Nothing like getting up in the morning to be greeted by a steamy rotten egg smelling bathroom.

potasium permanganate bottle for Kenmore green sand filter

potasium permanganate bottle for Kenmore green sand filter

I quickly determined that the Potasium Permanganate (KMnO4) bottle (small plastic bottle next to unit) on the green sand filter had run out.  It is really easy to replace, simply remove the old one and replace with the new bottle.  It is recommended that you wear gloves and a face mask when replacing.  The I bought an entire replacement bottle from Sears (part #3441799).   I also could have bought 6 pounds of Potasium Permanganate crystals and reused the old bottle.  The only issue now is what to do with the spent bottle, which still has Potasium Permanganate residue in it.  It is considered a powerful oxidizer and is dangerous to aquadic life so it cannot simply be dumped down the drain.  I will contact the county transfer station and find out the proper disposal method.

Popularity: 3% [?]