Tarkblog

This weekend I played plumber.

In the new house (new being a relative term…it’s an older house than our current one) we desire to have soft water. This required a water softener, of which my inlaws graciously donated to us as they were not using theirs anymore.

The basement already had a spot plumbed where a softener used go to. But, it only softened the hot water (for reasons I don’t understand). So, in order to do it “right” I needed to take out a section of steel water pipe, and rerouting the water through the water softener. I had done this before and while I wasn’t expecting it to be all that easy, I at least knew what I was facing. As an added bonus, all of the tools needed to do this were easily obtained from work. All I had to do was buy the copper parts.

The water enters the basement and immediately goes into a shutoff valve. From there it goes straight up the wall and into the ceiling area of the basement where it runs horizonally across the room. This vertical piece was the best spot to install the softener. My thought was to cut this steel pipe into two pieces using a saw, then remove each of the two pieces from the elbows they screwed into. I would then replace this with copper and use various fittings to put the water softener plumbing inline.

Not too difficult of a task. I figured it would take me half a day, mostly because I knew from experience I’d have to make at least 2-3 extra trips to the hardware store to buy parts I didn’t have on hand.

I turned off the water valve and began the cut (I used a Sawzall, so it didn’t take very long). As soon as I started to break through water came streaming out. At first I was a bit worried that maybe I hadn’t gotten the water turned off properly, but the pressure soon petered out and I realized it was just all of the built up water in the pipes causing the backpressure. It soon subsided.

I finished the cut and now had the pipe in two pieces. I started to use some pipe wrenches to undo one of the two pieces when I realized that water was still coming out of the pipe. Hmmm.. I soon realized that my main shutoff valve to the house wasn’t closing all of the way. This wasn’t a big problem - it was a pretty slow leak - but it raised a bigger concern because it’s almost impossible to use a torch and solder on copper pipe if it’s wet.

Furthermore, I wasn’t able to unthread the old steel pipe from its fittings. I tried very very hard. I was tired from the trying. It didn’t budge.

Now we had an issue. Annie and her mom were cleaning in the rest of the house, and I had the water off. I knew this may turn into somewhat of an issue, so I started thinking. I knew I needed a few more parts, so I went back to work to grab a few more things and ran into the bossman. I told him what I was trying to do and he made a few suggestions. He also showed me where the BIG pipe wrenches were.

I went back to the house and tried again with the BIG pipe wrenches. This time I had some success. The lower piece came off rather easily, but the upper piece was much more stubborn. It’s very difficult to get leverage to remove a pipe when the wrenches are above your head. Even on a ladder, pushing against the ground for leverage is very hard. I ended up pulling a move where I hung freely from one wrench while pushing off the wall with my feet and moving another one with my chest. It was very very ugly, but it worked. I got that side of the pipe off as well.

This was great. The hard part was done - now I just had to put my copper pieces together and do the torch work.

After about 10 minutes, I had it all together and was torching the pieces into place with solder. Soon thereafter I was done.

I set everything down, and turned on the water.

Drip…drip…drip.

One of my fittings had a leak. Sonofa. Remember, you can’t sweat copper fittings together if theyr’e wet. And there was no way to drain this thing.

All I could do was cut the offending copper piece out, and try again.

So I did. Another 20 minutes later, I was done.

Repressurized.

Drip…drip…drip.

Sonofa. My fix had a leak.

So I took out a much larger section, including a threaded piece I had screwed in.

This time, I did all of my sweat work — except for the very last one — on the floor. I made the entire piece of pipe before I put it into the system. That way, I could check for obvious leaks.

Put it all back together, did the last sweat, and repressureized. No visible leaks.

Awesome.

I called it a night (it was around 5pm). I turned the water back off, just in case…since we weren’t going to be there that night.

On Sunday, I went back and set up the softener. I cleaned out the brine tank and filled it with salt. I ran it through its paces. Everything seemed to work well!

Booyah.

I have henceforth decided that any more plumbing work will be done by a professional plumber, as I am way to sore and tired today to ever consider doing it again.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 7:14 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.