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Changing out the pipes

So, I have this really old house. Built in 1917, so it's really old. And I hate most things about it. Pipes Before

The plumbing hasn't given us too much trouble. The shower drains fairly well, especially after we use a quart of Drano in it. Monthly.

The kitchen sink drains fairly efficiently. Well, the left side leaks. Someone broke off almost all the threads on the drain before we moved in and wedged the coupling on just tight enough not to fall off but not tight enough to not leak. Oh, well, we'll replace that when we redo the kitchen someday.

The kitchen faucet leaks where it connects to the base. We'll replace that when we redo the kitchen.

The third floor toilet used to leak but then I replaced everything. Those quarter-turn shutoff valves are nice. They sure beat the turn-forever valves that seem to leak unless they're tightly open or tightly closed.

The faucet on the basement slop sink used to leak. Then I replaced the washers. Now they don't leak.

OK, so maybe I don't like the plumbing in this house, either.

The sink in the 2nd-floor bathroom used to drain quickly. Until the 1½" drain pipe fills up and some leak in the upper portion of the pipe causes water to spill over into the kitchen. Seriously.

We've tried snaking it out, using Drano and nothing seems to help except letting it slowly dry out until we fill it up again. Crazy; no way to live in a house.

So this upper picture is what I pulled out of my wall this weekend. I think there's just about every type of plumbing in this. Galvanized iron, cast iron, bronze, PVC. About the only thing missing is copper. Or maybe stainless.

The PVC on the left is a compression fitting that connects to the P-trap for the sink. The white thingy on the right is a plug of unknown purpose that stuck out into the room on the other side of the wall. The "thing" on the top wasn't totally attached—when I cut through the lower pipe, this just fell off. Hence the leak. Never mind the fact that there is nothing in the upper part of this pipe, just air. Yes, that's correct, my drain vents right into the space between the walls.

So I replaced it with $6 and change of Home Despot parts (second picture). FinishedPipes Oh, and I snaked out the drain; you should have seen the hairball!

It's funny to watch the kids use the sink. They've been conditioned to only use a few drops of water at a time so as not to fill up this drain and leak into the kitchen. I wonder how long it will take for them to get used to being able to run the faucet forever.

Now it drains slowly. But it doesn't drain into my kitchen. That's nice. But it drains slowly. That's not nice. I guess that leaky drain was letting air into or out of my drain system.

If it was letting air into my system, then I have a gadget (an Air Admittance Valve) for that problem. If it was letting air out of my system, well, then I guess we'll deal with a slow drain.

It will be nice to shave in the sink tomorrow. And not in a bucket.

I still have a hole in my wall, though. That's nothing compared to the hole in that room's ceiling. Yeah, the third-floor toilet caused that hole.

Sigh.

I hate my house.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on May 25, 2009 7:19 PM.

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