This was the weekend of our long-planned project to replace the old horizontal galvanized water lines with new copper to help our slow water flow. The hot water on the bathtub was the worst; in the past month, it’s just barely been enough for a warm shower some days. Now, it’s flowing almost as fast as the cold, and that’s better now too.
The whole thing went really well. No flooded basement or fires in the rafters, and no last-minute call to the plumber. I’ll post some pictures in a day or so - I should have taken before shots, there were some impressively ugly sections of pipe. It’s a much cleaner layout now, with straighter lines and simpler connections. I’ve also added dialectric unions where it’s joining back to the galvanized, which should avoid some of the problems we were having with the old setup. This also allows some nice disconnects for future mainenance.
Terry, Autumn’s dad, was in town for some meetings late in the week and stayed to help out Friday night and Saturday. Even though things generally went well, his planned return trip was delayed by a stubborn leaky elbow, and he ended up staying an extra night after we spent the afternoon re-setting that joint (twice!). Many thanks for his help and advice along the way. Thanks too to Autumn’s uncle Patrick, who gave some great advice based on his experience with very old plumbing. We didn’t break a single pipe, very probably thanks to a liberal soaking in liquid wrench the night before starting.
We started replacing at the first horizontal line after the main shutoff valve, replacing from there to the water heater and all basement branches (except for the outside faucet line) until the last fitting before it all goes upstairs. I made about 5 last-minute runs to the local hardware store for parts and supplies (this was after stocking up on pipe, fittings, solder, flux, etc before starting). We used almost 40 feet of 3/4 copper and made 30 sweat joints. Only 2 of them had leaks (one twice, see above).
One of Patrick’s tips was to be sure to use dielectric unions where the copper and steel meet. It was obvious how necessary this is when we took apart a joint in the 1/2″ hot water line about 3′ downstream from the water heater. It was probably put in when the heater before the current one was installed, about 15-20 years ago. The copper was clean, but the joint itself was about 75% closed by corrosion. The horizontal run immediately after that was about 60% closed with sediment.
The final step was to flush out the valve at the bath tub - the hot was still trickling after the work in the basement, but after removing the cartridge and flushing the line a little, it’s running like a faucet again, rather than an eye dropper. I’ll probably go around to all of the faucets and do the same thing, just to clear things out. At least there’s a lot less sediment in the system to come loose now.
Finally, this afternoon, i took the best shower i’ve ever had in this house. That made the whole project worth it to me.
