Monday, September 12, 2011

Drain plumbing 201

While Belle and my mother were busy cleaning the orange tree side of the yard, PaGyver and I took on the task of plumbing the upstairs into a fully working bathroom. We were 90% successful, we have a toilet, sink and bathtub all functioning. The shower however will need to wait one more weekend until I can solder the copper together and attach the valves.

This was one hell of a project. We have old galvanized pipe throughout and basically any part of the drainage that was even slightly horizontal is shot. It has had water sitting in it rusting it apart for at least 75 years. The drainpipes lead into massive 6" pipes that when removed are rusted to about a clear .5" center diameter. Its pretty crazy.

We started out planning to just remove the visibly cracked horizontals, and a section of each vertical to attach sanitary T connectors. We would no hub connect to the existing vertical pipe but glue in all the horizontal connections. Everything was going pretty well until I emptied the old toilet into the newly connected bathtub drain only to have it drain out the backside of a completely corroded trap. It was rather humorous as the side we could see looked fine, but the backside was simply not there. It was like someone had sliced the back off it.

The hits kept coming as the sink vertical disintegrated in our hands while trying to disconnect the existing sink to replace it's leaky trap. Shit. Back to home depot, now we need to do the vertical for the sink and no hub to the ventpipe above the waterline (praying that is in good shape).

After that the sink's drainpipe was completely rusted to the trap so we said screw it and got a new sink. Luck was on our side as the one we wanted was marked down 40% because someone hole sawed a 2" hole in the left side... good luck spotting it in our install! I think all in all we removed about 1500 lbs of pipe and plumbing fixtures. Anyone want an old 1930's toilet or a sink from the 50s? The toilet still worked when it came out, but no guarantees!

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