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jarrin > My House

Plumb-u-cation

This is more or less what I discovered at 2a Saturday morning while attempting to do my laundry. The cold water line had failed and was spraying water all over my work bench (drenching my MAPP/Oxy torch and bench grinder, but little else of importance). The floor was soaked both in this room and the adjacent one and some carpet remnants were wet.
This is more or less what...		Upon inspection, this old badly-installed saddle valve had corroded and failed. Once removed, there was only a small hole in the bottom that needed to be patched.
Upon inspection, this old...		Because it was not 2:30a Saturday morning (I was also sick with a nasty sore throat and was very tired) my quick-fix (aside from shutting all the water to the house off) was a vice grips clamping a small piece of rubber over the hole. This solution would probably have worked for weeks- but I wanted to fix it "right".
Because it was not 2:30a ...		Day 2, Saturday. Bicycled to the local hardware store (which was to be the first of five or six trips) wherein a nice employee suggested this plumber's epoxy putty. Just break off a chunk, mix it up a bit, and adhere. Twenty minutes later it will be as hard as steel.
Day 2, Saturday. Bicycle...		This is the pipe covered in five applications of epoxy putty. And even after five applications, it still leaked. This epoxy putty was clearly not cut out to do the job. I wasted $3 on that experiment!
This is the pipe covered ...		Day 3 or 4: I removed the bad epoxy putty and cut out the bad segment of pipe, intending on putting in a compression fit valve. Unfortunately, the edges of the pipe around the cut were badly degraded due to the old saddle valve and my attempts at scuffing the pipe to increase the adhesion of the epoxy putty. The compression fittings on the new valve would not seal properly and continued to leak.
Day 3 or 4: I removed the...
While testing the compression fit valve the spigot on my laundry tub suddenly decided to burst off and cause another plumbing problem! Instead of solving that problem, I just wrapped some wire around the spigot to hold it in place. That seems to work well enough. Maybe someday I'll fix that one "properly", too.
While testing the compres...		I ended up cutting the pipe a few feet upstream (on the other side of the wall) and installed the compression valve there. This operation was done with no trouble at all. The goal here was that I could now shut water off to the laundy room (laundry sink cold tap, washing machine, garden hose and kitchen sink cold) without having to disable the entire house's water supply. At this much went right.
I ended up cutting the pi...		Day 5 or so: Returned to the hardware store wherein I decided to try soldering a small connector segment between the pipe ends. In theory, this would be easy. However, the pipe was less than an inch from an overhanging joist, and less than two inches from the insulation surrounding the adjacent hot water line. Nevertheless, I fired up my MAPP/Oxy torch and applied heat to the pipe and attempted to sweat the solder into the gaps (I know what you're going to ask and yes, I had both proper flux ...
Day 5 or so: Returned to ...		Day 9: Sunday. I went to the hardware store yet again and decided to do what I should* have done over a week prior. I bought a small $9 pipe cutter (which worked great! Using it was even faster than using the Dremel.) and an 8" compression pipe patch.
Day 9: Sunday. I went to...		Less than twenty minutes later I had a proper patch on the pipe and I was finally able to (after nine days, remember) do my laundry. <p> Of course, as of this writing the finished patch has only been on for half an hour. If it's still dry tomorrow, I'll consider myself lucky.
Less than twenty minutes ...

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