Helping Mother - A Comedy of Errors (part three)

I know, I know, why has it taken so long to post this? I've been busy and have actually been getting some work done on the Old Crack House itself!

When I last wrote, I mentioned more issues with plumbing. I couldn't figure out why the "speedfit" adapters were leaking where they were attached to the original copper pipe. When I turned on the hot water supply, the shut off valve was also leaking at the joint where it was attached to the old copper pipe. My mother made a comment that prompted me to have one of those moments when you realize what the problem is but you don't know right away how to fix it. She said rather calmly, "You don't suppose it's imperial pipe?"

In England, household supply lines are generally 15mm or 22mm pipe. Imperial measurements would be exactly as we use in the U.S. either half inch or 3/4 inch. Luckily 1/2 inch equals 15mm but 22mm is about 1mm larger than 3/4 inch thus explaining the cause of the leaks. They make a fitting for this but I was running out of time, patience and the part that I needed would have to come from a plumbing supply store and those close early in the UK. I wasn't planning on replacing the old copper hot water supply line but now it would actually be easier and faster to do so. Since I couldn't readily acquire an imperial to metric fitting so I bought some 3/4 inch brass olives for a compression fitting and used one at the shut off that I had installed, removing all the copper after that point and replacing it with the plastic pipe and "speedfit" fittings. This worked! Once the plumbing was functioning properly I was able to finish grouting tile and installing fixtures knowing that any additional leaks would be from the fixtures. My older brother who lives an hour away could fix those if he could get his hands on an adjustable wrench. So, with the plumbing done, what else could go wrong? Easy, the new drain fittings were metric and the old pvc waste lines were imperial which meant that I had to replace the drain traps and some pvc pipe. Fortunately these pipes just had to go through the wall to feed an outside drain. The sink trap had to have an adjustable neck though because the new sink drain pipe would not line up with the old one .... Then there was the tile that I broke installing some baseboard molding and the fact that I couldn't install the towel rail because there was problem with one of the parts .... need I go on?

The comedy of errors ended with the bathroom looking like this.




I estimated that I saved my mother $2000. In the process she learned a little bit about plumbing and how the time taken to do anything related to plumbing is inversely proportional to the complexity of the job! I still hate plumbing!

Helping Mother - A Comedy of Errors (part two)

OK, in England the plumbing is weird. You can buy copper pipe for plumbing. It comes in 22 mm and 15 mm sizes and you can buy plastic pipe, similar to PEX but more rigid which is joined with what we would call "gator grips" in the US. Of course in the US you can also use PVC or CPVC pipe for plumbing.
So, I have to re-route the plumbing in order to shut off the downstairs bathroom from the rest of the house. This I am able to do using the plastic Speedfit system however I run into a problem. The copper pipe feeding he bathroom is in a very awkward place behind the bath tub. In fact it was so awkward that at one point a hole was knocked into the wall to access the pipes due to previous leaks. Here is a picture showing a boarded up hole in a concrete block wall behind where the bath tub was located.



I was able to re-route the cold water line quite easily. It was all 15 mm pipe and the Speedfit fittings worked great. I had problems though with the 22 mm fittings over the copper pipe. They tended to leak. Here is a picture of the new plumbing in the water closet. Some of those copper pipes feed the radiator system. Don't get me started on that ...



Now while I was trying to figure out the plumbing I went ahead and tiled the walls. I ran into a slight problem though. The tile cutter that we had borrowed would cut tiles up to 12" across. My mother had chosen 16" tiles. Of course this was realized late at night. This meant that we had to rent a long tile cutter. Since the stores in England tend to close by 6 PM, this was another delay.

The next day I rented the tile cutter but after cutting 8 tiles the device that split the tiles broke. This meant a quick return to the rental facility before it closed so that I could get a tile splitter that would handle the 16" tiles. Murphy's law was certainly at play!



I also needed a hole cutter for the sink waste pipe and a carbide saw blade for a jig saw. Let me just say that things are quite expensive in England. By this point it is Wednesday and I was hoping that I would have been finished by now. No such luck though!

Next I will tell you why the 22mm Speedfit fittings were leaking. By this point I was frustrated with plumbing, however, I am used to it by now .....

Just so you can relate to everyone involved, here is a picture of my mother doing what she likes most .... shopping!

Helping Mother - A Comedy of Errors (Part one)

A couple of months back I got an email from my mother. She was going to get her bathroom remodeled and she was quoted $6000 for a room that was no more than 10' X 8'.
So, being the good boy that I am, I volunteered for the job in order to save her several thousand $$$. The job involved putting tile on the walls and installing new bath tub, toilet and sink.

Well last week I went to mother's house and spent 7 of the 12 days working on the bathroom project. Just like at The Old Crack House I managed to under estimate the time it would take to finish the job. When people ask about how I am doing with our house, I generally reply with "I am ten years into my three year project!" If all went well with my mothers bathroom it could be done in 3 days, possibly 5 days. Needless to say, nothing went well. My brother stopped by soon after my arrival and proceeded to tell me that where my mother lives the only water supplied by a main pressure line was the kitchen faucet. The water would then feed into a cistern in the roof that feeds all the other parts of the house by what is referred to as a low pressure system. I put my nephew to work right away pulling up carpet tiles and then linoleum tiles from the floor while I set about looking at the plumbing.

The first thing I had to do was isolate the downstairs bathroom from the rest of the house so that I could remove all the fixtures and still have water supply to the kitchen and upstairs bathroom. After turning off the water to the house I installed two shut off valves. One to the hot water line that came from the water heater and a cold water line that went to the cistern. I disconnected and removed the toilet from the room and turned on the main water supply that was located under the kitchen sink. Well, water started spewing everywhere! Upon close examination I could see that the water line from the kitchen went under the floor and came up behind the bath tub where it branched off to feed the sink, toilet and bath before going up to the cistern. The water line would not be accessible unless the tub was removed and it would appear that a hole had been put into the concrete block wall behind the tub in the past for this very reason.

I learned three things that day. One, my brother knows nothing about plumbing. Two, the water was going to have to remain shut off for at least a day since, three, it was going to take longer than expected simply because where mother lives the shops close at 6 PM and it takes 15 minutes to go 3 miles in a car.

Here are pictures of the bathroom before I got started. My mother and her friend had already removed much of the wall tile before my arrival. You can see all the lovely avocado green fixtures that were popular in the 1970s. However, this bathroom was done around October 1983 if the newspaper stuffed as a filler in some of the wall spaces has anything to tell us. The pages were dated September 23, 1983.







Now before I continue with part two of this saga, I do need to mention that mother lives in England .......

More Recognition

Wow. No posts for months and now you get three in three days! My "Steam Punk Bathroom" got some web recognition back in July and I am finally getting around to mentioning it on this blog.

1800recycling.com posts articles about reusing materials and keeping them out of the landfill. There is also a search by zip code feature that informs you where you can take certain types of recyclable products. Try it out!

To all my Facebook Friends, these ramblings are posted to my houseblog at http://www.thisoldcrackhouse.blogspot.com and get fed to my Facebook account so that they appear as Facebook posts and not as posts to a blog page. To see the posts you need to click the "view original post" link next to comments. Some of the links and video don't work through Facebook.

You Know it is Getting Colder When ....

You know it is getting colder when 8 tons of wood pellets are delivered to your house and you need to move them to the basement! Eight tons arrived last Wednesday. Have already moved five tons to my basement.You know, last year we had 8 tons delivered and I had to move them. All I can think of is this song ....



I ought to get me some coal.

The Added Cost of Screen Doors

Way back in June 2002 I took all the siding off the outside of the kitchen and wrote about it on my web page at that time. Then 7 years later we experienced the great termite invasion of 2009.
I never realized that it has been two years that I have lived without gutters on the kitchen. The lack of gutters has posed a few problems for us over the years.

Anyway. Since the weather has not cooperated with my schedule to do more work on my roof, I have embarked on getting things done to the outside of the kitchen. The last post indicated that the addition of screen doors meant that the color scheme was due to be changed. Well, I just have one more coat of paint to put around the windows and something has to be done with the 8 inch space near the ground but here is the back of the house now. Complete with screen door!



As you can see in this photo I have a new toy to ride around on.



This one is a bit blurry but it says "Elvis 150" on the side. Never thought I would own own anything with "Elvis" on it .........

The Roof and Other Projects

Since I haven't been able to finish the roofing project this year because of the wettest spring in decades and then some 30 days of 90+ degree weather this summer and the lack of 4 consecutive days without rain at 80 degrees or below, I decided to take on some lesser projects.
The first was putting in a window well and a replacement window in the front of the main house.




This window project came about after tearing off the front porch last September. Once we did that it exposed an old window opening that was below grade. My box gutter work fixed the leaks in the back that flooded the basement but now water and dirt was coming into the front room of the basement so I had to put this in. I have since inserted a water faucet through the framing so now that it is September, I can water the front yard. (After everything has shriveled and died.) I have put an electrical box on the opposite side of the frame but haven't connected it yet. Maybe I can have that done before Halloween. I was forced to reorganize the basement in order to access this window. That project was 10 years overdue. This meant sorting through a pile of scrap copper and fittings which I still have to take to the scrap yard. Now here is the funny plumbing story because anyone who has followed this blog knows that I can't do plumbing without a leak. I connected a PEX line to an existing shut-off valve and ran it to the faucet set up. All I had to do was turn on the valve and watch for my PEX to leak at a connection. Well, I turned the valve which has been off for only 10 years ....

Water started pouring out of the valve and shutting off wasn't working. So I had to shut the water off to the whole house and figure out what to do. Of course the valve was now in an awkward spot since the furnace duct-work was installed adjacent to it last fall. It was fortunate that I had not taken the metal to the scrap yard because I was able to reconstruct the valve from old parts in a bucket! The rubber had deteriorated in the original valve. Needless to say a simple project took an hour longer than planned. I really hate plumbing .......

Next I'll tell you how my screen door project has forced me to re-paint the outside of the kitchen. Here is the view the wife has been yearning for. Something about a cross breeze she says ....



Nothing is ever easy with this money pit!