A couple weekends ago, I got the opportunity to work on a big house project that I've wanted to do for years: replacing the galvanized pipe in our basement plumbing system. The 1928 year old pipes were mostly choked with rust, we had a few small leaks appearing and our water pressure has been decreasing for years. Add to that the fact that our furnace hadn't been at the right pressure, we couldn't use the outside faucet on the front of the house, and our water shutoff was an original-to-the-house screw valve and it was long past due to update.
A few pieces of the system had been replaced with CPVC by some of the previous owners, so I decided to continue using that product. Copper would have been nice, but also four times the cost (and my solder skills are...okay).
Steph went to visit her roomates for the weekend, so with that window for shutting off the water, I jumped in. First, a good breakfast (it was eggs)!
I spent several days planning and inventoring and felt pretty well prepared...
But of course the first thing I did led to a trip to Lowes. My fears about the main shutoff were well founded-once I closed it and cut open the pipes, I found out the valve was leaky and wasn't able to hold the pressure. But with a quick trip and a compression linkage, I was able to get the new ball valve installed and actually cut off the water-whew!
The rest of the morning was spent in full-force removal mode. I ended up with a couple cuts, a lot of dirt on my hands, and an impressive pile of pipes.
Also as suspected, many of the pipes were mostly cut off with rust
While I was tearing things apart, I also decided to reposition our hot water heater (new last fall)
Saturday turned into a 14 hour day, but at the end almost all the old pipes were removed and I was ready for a day of epoxy on Sunday (with the help of Indiana Jones on in the background)
Steph was coming home at 7:40 that day, but at 5:30 I was finally ready to turn on the water!
The moment of truth!
And miracle of miracles, it pretty much all worked! I even had to solder some copper pipes around our furnace and kitchen water systems and they're holding great (thank you Richard on This Old House for good TV solder advice ;) I had to replace two junctions that started dripping and had to do new laundry hook-ups, but it actually wasn't bad and by Monday night we had a fully functional system back. Our water pressure went up 10psi (we can have more than two faucets open in the house and still have good pressure!)
This was a big project, but even though they were long days I never felt outclassed. It's definitely good to be able to understand how all our systems fit together in the house.
