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Here are some pictures of the project:

Here’s an old horizontal hot water line, 1/2″ - not much water getting through.

This is an old steel/copper joint. This is also why i added 3 dialectric unions where i had to join the two. The hole in the copper side was about 1/2 this size when i first took it apart.

Here’s a shot of part of the finished job. Much cleaner - i should have taken before pictures, it’s much nicer looking now!

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.

Window repair, that’s the project of the season, and i’m making some good headway.

We have the original beautiful wood, double-hung, cast iron-weighted, wavy-glassed windows in our house, and not a one is painted. Except for the bathroom. And the basement. And the outsides. They’re shellacked (mostly) on the inside, but painted (again, mostly) on the outside.

Most of them are also incredibly drafty, with about 2″ of good glazing on many of them, with the sashes rattling in the frames.

That’s slowly changing now, as I work my way through the house. I fixed a couple of them last year, but decided to make a big push before winter this year.

The biggest improvements are that i’m re-adjusting the trim (to fix some of the looseness), and adding some bronze weatherstripping to the windows, which makes a huge difference. They still slide up and down easily, but there’s no more side-to-side slop, and they obviously fit more tightly. We also noticed a big improvement in sound proofing, with much less traffic noise coming into the front bedroom. I’ll bet that in a couple of years, when the bronze tarnishes some, it’ll blend right in with the dark woodwork and look really nice too.

I’m also doing some minor cleanup and touching up the shellac on the windows. The lower horizontals on most ledges and sash frames is dry, and in some places, the finish is completely gone. A coat or 2 of new shellac, and they look fabulous. It works really well to blend and (somewhat) smooth the older coats. They should be much easier to clean too.

The garage door opener got finished yesterday, in a couple hours of work in the morning. It went pretty slow, partly because it was 6:30 when i got up, and partly because i wanted to be sure all the wiring got done properly. The last thing i wanted was to hit the button for the first time and see a rafter torn out or the door buckle. No such problems, it all went very smooth, just slowly. It’s in there solid now, a pretty decent job.

Autumn helped move the workbench to the garage today, and she assembled the potting bench too, so we have the major ‘furniture’ in the garage. Lots of organizing to do, but finally the space is getting defined.

I’m starting to realize how cold it’s going to be in the shop all winter…

Well, we took to opener back to the store last night, apparently a screw drive won’t work - the track is too tall for the opening. Very irritating. The joint who installed the opener said they can pu in the chain drives with as little as 1 1/2″, which is only a little less than i have. It’s annoying that the garage is built this way, but no one bothered to tell us that our choice of openers is limited by their design. bleah. Time for an irate call.

Anyhoo, we exchanged it for a chain drive, and it looks like i can make it work. It’ll still be a tight fit, but i don’t think i’ll have to do too much to make it work, maybe shave a rafter a little. Hopefully installing it tonight (got started last night, but got sidetracked).