So, some plumbing

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve added a post. I know I barely just started, but life is chaotic between work, family, and projects. I often feel burnt out whenever I do have free time. Not to mention, writing is not the easiest thing for me. But in any case, it's Saturday morning, and I’m making time. I hope to get into a new routine and post at least once a week. We shall see…

Ok, let’s see, where were we? Plumbing updates. Ah yes, let’s see how well I recall this. To be honest, nothing too exciting here, except for a copper water line busting on me. We will get to that in a bit.

So, I am no plumbing expert. Some things I will do myself, while for others, I will call in an expert. In this case, I needed a new hot water tank. The labor to install it from a local contractor wasn’t too bad, so I hired a plumber. I had a few other concerns I wanted him to look at anyway. He immediately noticed something about my hot water tank: I had an expansion tank on top. Since I am on a well and have a larger pressure tank, he informed me that it didn’t make sense to have this expansion tank. While discussing this, I asked him to inspect my actual pressure tank because the water pressure seemed odd, and there was a slight smell in the water.

Old tank to the left. New above. You may notice the different door to. :)

He went over to my tank, gave it a few knocks and a push, and said the pressure tank had failed; it was waterlogged. Not knowing much about these things, I thought it was normal for the pressure tank to feel full of water. Apparently, this is not the case. So, it was time to add a new pressure tank to the bill. (And I will say, the new tank sounds hollow and can easily be rocked back and forth, so he wasn’t trying to get me to pay for unnecessary work).

Next, I asked him to look at my shut-off valve because it seemed odd that it was before the pressure tank that signals the well to provide more water. My suspicions were correct. I was informed that if I shut off the water to the house and turned on all the faucets, it would signal the well to provide water, causing the valve to close and creating a dead end. This is not good. So, we added a new shut-off valve on the correct side of the pressure tank to the bill.

Old Valve location to the left. And the new up above after the tank.

Now we had a new hot water tank, a new pressure tank, and a new shut-off valve. The plumber’s work was done and paid for. It was time to move on to the next project: installing our new washer and dryer!

Alright, remember I mentioned a broken copper line earlier? Well… this was fun. While preparing for the new washer and dryer, I had to remove the old ones, right? The hot and cold-water lines seemed to have been having serious issues with leaking and were oddly very corroded, probably from the leaking. While attempting to remove the hose from the fitting, it wouldn’t budge. So, I decided to use some vise grips and elbow grease. While reefing on the fitting, you probably guessed it—the fitting snapped off, and water sprayed full force in my face, soaking the room.

I tried plugging it with my hand and some towels while I yelled for my wife to rush to the garage to use our new shut-off valve and turn off the water to the house. Finally, the water stopped… but now I had a huge mess on my hands. This project just got bigger…

Time for a trip to Lowe's: I needed two new fittings, some copper line, and some sheetrock since I had to cut below the fitting to replace the damaged copper line. Thirty minutes to Lowe's, thirty minutes back, and at this point, my wife and kids had been without water for over an hour on a school night. So, I rushed to get this fixed up. Sheetrock cut out, copper line cut back, new fittings soldered on, and then new pipe soldered to the old with the help of a copper coupling. Moment of truth almost three hours later: the water was turned back on, and thank God, no leaks.

As you can see… Still not done here, but my hack jobs still holding!

Now I could finally install the new washer and dryer, get the kids washed up, and put to bed. What a day that was. By the way, to this day, the sheetrock is still open behind the washer. I was worried my solder job wouldn’t hold up. Well, six years later, it’s still holding fine. It's one of the many things on my future project list. When I remodel the laundry area, I have a few things I’d like to do. When that happens, I’ll have a new and hopefully less exciting post for you all.

Well above is the ancient washer and less old dryer. To the right are the new ones 6 years in. Pardon the mess, one of a few reasons I want to redo this area. More storage and maybe some barn doors to hide everything when not in use. Ah future projects.

But for now, I’ll continue with the past and how we got to where we are today.

Coming up next… well, I have to think about what was next. Haha. I think I moved on to tackling some outside projects and some day-to-day life out here. Oh, and our first winter snow!