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Last night my hot water heater's mixing valve, which until then was content to leak a slow drip (less than a cup's worth a day, had a small tupperware container catching it) decided to go HAM on me and spew out a few gallons of water all over my basement floor. Thankfully nothing was damaged other than a few scrap pieces of drywall and an old rug. Managed to get the water out with a wet/dry vac and a couple fans. I took apart the mixing valve and could see the problem:  That's the gasket+filter on the hot inlet. Here's the whole thing, with the cold-side gasket for comparison:  The model of the valve:  And close-ups of the hot and cold inlets:   A few questions: 1) Can I just get the gasket+filter thing? I took it to a small local hardware store but they didn't have it. Haven't tried a Lowe's or HD yet, but I might go over there today on my lunch break. We also have an F.W. Webb near me, so maybe it'd be best just to go there? 2) Assuming I can just get that gasket, does the rest of the valve look ok? I see it has some corrosion, but I imagine I can just scrape that off, right? 3) There was no teflon tape on the threads when I removed it...should there be? In order of preference I'd prefer just to replace the gasket (might as well do both while I'm at it,) then if I can't, replace it with the exact same valve, since everything is all nicely set up to have this exact model fit in there. If I have to replace it with a different valve (or just ditch it altogether, they aren't required by code here) I might have to get a plumber, since I have no experience with sweating copper pipes.
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Mar 22, 2016 14:01
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Cool, thanks. The plumbing store didn't have it, but a distribution center for Watts is relatively nearby so the store is calling them to see if they have the gaskets or repair kits. If not, they have the whole valve for line $100...I'd really prefer just the gaskets.
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Mar 22, 2016 22:44
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Rd Rash 1000cc posted:This sounds more like a T/P valve. Was the water heater covered in water at the top or was it mainly at the floor? Usually when something leaks its not 8oz for a long time. Then starts spewing out a gallon over night. I don't know what to tell you, other than that's exactly what happened.  All the water on the floor was clearly coming from the mixing valve. The top of the water heater had a small pool of water that was dripping down the side. The T/P valve was done-dry. It had around 24 hours it could have been leaking at the higher rate. I was in the basement Sunday night and it was fine, and then by Monday night it was water everywhere, so it's not like it was spraying super fast, just a lot more than the previous couple weeks. Even if it was only leaking at the higher amount for half of that time, that's still maybe 4 gallons over 12 hours? 1/3 of a gallon an hour isn't a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. The mesh screens (figured I might as well get two,) are on the way. F.W.Webb got in touch with Watts and they're shipping them right to me, but I likely won't have them until Friday, maybe Saturday. I'll probably go get a plain old 1" rubber washer today and put it in to have hot water back. Using it for 2-3 days without a filter can't be that bad, right?
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Mar 23, 2016 15:52
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Cross-posted from the Fix it Fast thread: This past winter, despite turning off the water supply to my hose (and then also opening up the drain plug AND the hose faucet to drain water,) it still had enough water left in it to freeze and bust open. It was right at the elbow (yeah, instead of coming straight out of the hose to the faucet, it makes a 90 degree turn, because I have a deck off the back of the house so it would be a lot more pipe to have it keep going straight.) I used a pipe cutter and cut off the last inch or so from each end of pipe, and now I'm wondering the best way to fit them back together. Obviously, I could just sweat them back. But this is my first home, only in it a few months, so I have no supplies for that other than the aforementioned pipe cutter, which was just left behind by the previous owner. So I'd have to get flux, solder, torch, nozzle, etc... Plus, because of having to cut the pipes back, they don't line up well anymore (and they didn't line up great before, the pipe coming out of the house was already bent slightly.) Can I just use something like this to fix it quick:  Push fittings and flexible so no precise lining up or soldering required. But I'm wondering if it's rated for outdoor use...I'm guessing no.
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Apr 23, 2016 22:16
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After seeing a couple things recently about "sacrificial anodes" in hot water heaters, I figured it's probably time to check on mine. The unit was installed in 2011 (I bought the house in 2015,) and knowing what I do about the previous home-owner, there's no way he replaced it before I bought it. I just don't know where the darn thing is. Here's the top of the thing:  Here's the part in the manual describing it:  So...does that mean it's under/part of the hot water outlet here?: 
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May 1, 2018 15:58
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My sillcock is giving me some problems lately, looking for advice/confirmation of my idea of what's wrong. It was working fine until Tuesday/yesterday. We watered our garden Tuesday night and shut it off, thinking all was fine. Last night I go outside and I notice that 3 pinhole leaks formed in our hose (incidentally, this is the third time some pinhole leaks have formed in our hose...not sure if the pressure is too high or the hose is just lovely, it's less than 2 years old.) So I go to shutoff the sillcock assuming it wasn't shut off Tuesday, but it seems like its' already off. I REALLY crank down hard on it, and it finally turns a tiny bit more and is mostly off...if I disconnect the hose a trickle still comes out, but not enough to matter once I get the hose back on, the pinhole leaks barely have anything come out. So is it likely a bad rubber washer on the stem of the sillcock? It's a frost-free one, similar to this: 
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Jul 12, 2018 15:09
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Yesterday, I noticed some corrosion on my water heater's mixing valve. Is this anything I need to be concerned about?
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Jul 31, 2018 19:00
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Cross-posting from the HVAC thread: Looking for recommendation on electric tankless water heaters. I'm under contract for a house, and one of the first things I'd like to do is ditch the rented electric water heater for a tankless/on-demand one. My local electric utility, in partnership with a state-wide not for profit group, offers rebates on a lot of efficiency purchases, including things like dryers, fridges, and hot water heaters. There is a short list, though. Here's their website with the brands/models that they offer rebates for: https://marketplace.efficiencyvermo...type The house will be occupied mostly by me, maybe a second person from time to time (I might do short term room rentals for some extra cash, or a girlfriend who spends a lot of time there.) But no more than that, no kids, and I don't plan to do things like run the shower and washing machine at the same time, so I don't need a TON of flow. I know a natural gas on-demand heater might be more efficient overall, but the house (despite being in the NG service area) is all electric, and I'd rather not spend the hundreds of dollars it would probably be to get the gas pipe from the road to the basement (at least not yet...I probably will in a few years when I get sick of an electric stove and demand gas.) And that 220V line from the old water heater will just be sitting there, ready to go. Edit: Well, nevermind, the HVAC thread goons are telling me why they're generally not recommended. Guess I'll just keep the existing one and swap to an on-demand gas one when I get that stove and gas line installed a few years down the line. DrBouvenstein fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 16:18
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Thanks everyone. I guess I assumed they must be efficient if they're, you know...being offered rebates through an efficiency program. And yeah, to what some others are saying, it could be a long while to get savings on getting my gas connected, depending on price. Right now, going from my previous house, I was paying just over $20 a month just for the connection. Even if I used no gas that month at all, it would be around $24. I still do want to look into it at some point since, as said, even my heat is electric and that will almost certainly be more expensive to heat than if I already had a gas hookup and furnace (though not sure what the comparison would be on, say, forced hot air like my last place, or a hot water baseboard system. I assume the baseboards are more efficient, but a more expensive install?)
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Aug 23, 2019 16:33
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Motronic posted:(not judging either way, I don't know enough) Brb, gonna install a nuclear reactor in my new house so I can FINALLY have the potential to know more about something than Motronic. My best friend is a nuclear engineer, so I'll be fine.
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Aug 26, 2019 20:44
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This is the under-sink situation in my new home's kitchen: Sorry for the poor lighting, but you get the gist. Neither hot nor cold supply have proper shut-offs/valves (please forgive my lack of proper plumbing terminology.) I'm assuming it's an easy fix, just poo poo off water, drain what's in the pipes, then cut off the copper going to the faucet and install a couple of these. Not neccesarily those exact ones, but some sort of properly-sized stop vale that is straight through, not angled. I have a new faucet I want to install already (garage sale find like a year ago for $10, Moen faucet never taken out of the package) and it has braided steel hoses already, so that half is all set. I hope it fits onto the old as gently caress sink in the first place...if not, I'll have ot get a new basin, too. And I know the drains are all sorts of hosed up, too. Here's a better view of that:  It's hard to see, but the P-trap drains to a pipe just behind that front horizontal one to the copper drain pipe coming out of the wall. I have no idea what that other random piece on the right is for...there is no dishwasher, and I don't think there ever was...all I can think is that at some point this was fixed with just whatever random assortment of PVC some neighborhood handyman had.
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Sep 16, 2019 16:47
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kid sinister posted:Wow, that's pretty bad. Why is your drain pipe angled up at the wall? God, I wish I knew. No real way to fix that, right? I can get the drains from the sink potentially higher up so they don't drain up to the wall drain, but the copper drain pipe coming out of the wall is angled slightly up for some reason... There's no other plumbing on that side of the house, all it needs to do is go down to the basement then across to the sewer drain. kid sinister posted:Also, I spotted an outlet down there. Get a lamp or something, along with a face plate. Plug it in and test switches around that sink. You might be able to put in a disposal too. Test the switch with both the top and bottom of that outlet. Rarely, a duplex under the sink has one always on for the dishwasher and one switched for the disposal. There's only one switch anywhere near the sink and it's the light above the sink... Maybe there was the intention on installing a dishwasher that never came to fruition.
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Sep 17, 2019 12:35
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kid sinister posted:Fix the drains first. You'll need to figure out why that pipe at the wall is angled down. What is on the other side of that wall? The outside is on the other side of the wall. It's a 1-story ranch, so I can see where the drain pipe comes down from the wall in the basement, and then across the basement ceiling to the sewer drain. Still no clue why it's angled like that. Though a LOT of my drain pipes are original...and copper...thick, BEEFY, copper, so maybe i'll just rip them out for the scrap value and put new PVC drain in everywhere, heh.
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Sep 19, 2019 13:12
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Sink update: Replaced that weird maze of a drain system with mostly just your standard 2 bay drain kit and a P trap kit.  Only other piece I needed was a rubber adapter coupling to connect the p trap to the copper drain. I also replaced the sink because the old one was..well...old, and also leaking. But I've got a new weird problem...about the tenth time I used the new sink ( Moen Surie) the pressure was way too low. I originally thought maybe the washing machine was filling, but that wasn't it. I took off the spray head and found gunk...it looks and feels like charcoal:   I cleared it out, ran the faucet for about a minute, and checked again and more was there (not as much as last time, but the faucet hadn't been run as much.) I checked the bathroom faucet and tub and no other fixture has this stuff. My house doesn't have any sort of water filter anywhere. I'm a little perplexed.
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Sep 22, 2019 17:29
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It definitely wasn't mold. Not remotely slimy, hard and crunchy...like, literally felt like charcoal. Not squishy like I'd expect a gasket to be, though I suppose an old one might get like that? But isn't that usually why happens to old dried up rubber, not rubber that's sitting in water? At any rate, there's no more of it. After that first time taking apart the spray head and removing the crud, I key the faucet on for over a minute, and found a little bit more. Cleaned, reassembled, ran for a couple minutes and there was no more crud. And since I'm here, WTF is going on with my bathroom faucet supply lines? They're...connected? That's a weird return path between the hot and cold lines, sort of crimped in the middle: 
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Sep 23, 2019 18:42
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SourKraut posted:Did you say the sink itself is new, or new-er? Depending on the chlorine levels of your city water and how they're dosing, it could be that the internal synthetic rubber materials in the sink supply lines are being dissolved slowly due to some interaction that is occurring. Out of curiosity, when you let it sit for awhile (aka days), and then turn it on, did you see quite a bit of air coming out at first? The faucet was brand new, that occurred shortly after installing. And I can't tell if air co.es out since there hasn't been enough time if it has to sit for days... Longest it's been off since the install is maybe 16 hours?
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Sep 24, 2019 00:07
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SourKraut posted:If you've only noticed this deposit/residue at this sink and nowhere else, then my money would be on potential breakdown of the sink's supply line flexible material due to some interaction with chlorine, chloramine, or another treatment process chemical. The supply lines are also brand new. They came with the faucet. 
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Sep 24, 2019 02:46
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Hey all, I previously posted about the possibility of a tankless electric water heater and was informed that generally they're terrible. Well, now I'm back to look for suggestion on a tankless GAS water heater, since the local gas company will install a gas line for free from the street to my house as long as I get a gas appliance hooked up within 6 months. I'm looking to qualify for an efficiency rebate from my gas company, so here are the efficiency requirements:   So...is it worth finding a tankless that has a .90+ EF from the AHRI, or would the extra cost from that offset the rebate? Is just the .82-.89 good enough? As for flow, I don't see myself ever having to have more than the washing machine (front load, so less water usage) and one faucet on at a time. I live by myself, so there won't be multiple showers or a dishwasher (don't have one) and a shower, for instance, at the same time.
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Oct 16, 2019 15:10
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PremiumSupport posted:First off, whomever is giving the rebate needs to update their table, the EF rating system was replaced by UEF back in 2017. Cool, thanks. I'll make sure to get in touch with the gas company (that's who the rebate is through) to clarify regarding EF vs UEF. H110Hawk posted:I sorta wish I had gotten the high efficiency model, I only got mid-80 as I recall and it seems silly how much waste heat this thing sends off. It's definitely a bump in the gas bill, but for a single person it may be under the minimum bill. I don't think my gas company has a minimum bill. I mean...it does in the sense that if even if I I used no gas at all I would get charged roughly $0.75 a day just for the luxury of being hooked up to their system, but there's no sort of "Min. $35 monthly bill if your usage is under XYZ amount." type of thing.
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Oct 16, 2019 19:14
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Two questions today: 1) My tub faucet. Not sure of the brand, but it's operated from just a single knob, turning it is both flow control...sort of...and temperature. Turning counter-clockwise turns it on, and the more counter-clockwise you go the hotter it gets...except then at some point going in that direction eventually shuts the faucet off...but it's not at the end of its rotation, I can keep turning it and then it comes back on: https://gfycat.com/illegalembarrassedkusimanse Hard to see, but you can see it better looking at the shadow of the water. I'm only turning the knob counter-clockwise in that video. When it comes back on after coming to nearly off, it's only cold water, and it's full hot water right before it starts to trickle. 2) My hot water...namely, I don't seem to have enough.. I have an electric heater with a 50 gallon tank, both temp dials were set to about 130/135 when I first noticed I didn't have a lot of hot water, I upped them to the max of 150 and it seems to have made no difference. I get maybe 10-12 minutes of hot water in the shower before I notice is starts to cool down, then I have maybe 1-2 minutes of warm water if I turn the hot to full blast before it is basically gone and I have room temp water for a minute or 2 then full cold. From my research, likely factor is one of the heating elements (probably the lower one) is bad/faulty? I was planning to get a gas on-demand heater eventually, so it looks like I'll just have to up the time table on that if fixing this heater costs more than like $50.
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Oct 29, 2019 14:15
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B-Nasty posted:If you have an electric tank and are trying to move to gas tankless, you're going to be looking at a very large bill to run new gas piping and exhaust/intake pipes. I called my gas utility and they install lines from the supply pipes along the road to my house for free, so that's covered. I guess the big question is if I can choose where they have it enter the house, since where the current water heater is makes it easier to reconnect the plumbing. At the very least, the current water heater location is along the wall facing the road, roughly halfway along the wall, so even if the gas comes in at one of the corners, it's about as short a stretch of gas pipe needed as I could hope for. And are the exhaust lines that expensive? It's a ranch with the top 12 or so inches of the basement ceiling area above grade, so can't I just vent horizontally out through the rim joist area?
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Oct 29, 2019 15:13
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B-Nasty posted:That's likely what will need to be done. I feel like I can do the exhaust, though I suppose it would be weird to have a plumber over to do the gas line, hookup the water heater, then have him leave before it's really "done" just so I can save another couple hundred. And the tankless models I'm looking at are at the lower end (since I live alone I don't need a huge flow rate) maybe $1000-$1200, and I can get up to $500 back as part of an efficiency program from my gas supplier. So hopefully I could go all in for less than $2000, but I'll research my current tank options first...I feel like it might be the thermostat, because like I said, I set it to 150 for both elements but there's no way it's actually that hot, I haven't checked, but a faucet on full hot doesn't feel any hotter to me than any other place I've been where it's set at 120-125.
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Oct 29, 2019 17:57
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DrBouvenstein posted:water heater stuff Well I just remembered my water heater is actually leased from the electric company (I've only been here a month and a half and only just got my second electric bill, cut me some slack), so I'll just call them ans see if they can check/service it for cheap/free first before I go down any sort of on demand/gas installation route.
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Oct 31, 2019 18:10
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gvibes posted:That seems like a bad valve/cartridge. You can get replacement ones, but you need to figure out valve what you have. The most common brands seem to be Moen and Delta. You probably need to start by pulling the knob off, seeing what the valve looks like, and comparing to pictures online. It's a Delta, but it's also old, so who knows its a valve I can still get. Might just replace the tub faucet and handle since I don't like this style anyway. I like having separate controls for flow and temp, not just "always on full blast" with temp control. I'll see if it does what my sink did when I shut off the water...it still flowed cold water out the entire time. Even after I had the faucet open for several minutes to try and relieve all the pressure. Good thing it was a press-fitting and not one I had to solder. I suspect it was back pressure from the water heater, since I don't have a cold water expansion tank. This time, I'll shut off the water coming in from the mains (since the shower doesn't have any dedicated shut offs,) as well as the cold water inlet to the water heater to see if that helps.
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Nov 1, 2019 16:47
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DrBouvenstein posted:Well I just remembered my water heater is actually leased from the electric company (I've only been here a month and a half and only just got my second electric bill, cut me some slack), so I'll just call them ans see if they can check/service it for cheap/free first before I go down any sort of on demand/gas installation route. Well, I called the electric company and it is NOT leased, so I guess the seller just checked the wrong box on the SPIR. But, I found out this house was part of a program called Power Miser that the company used to do that helped offload power to non-peak times, and my water heater is on one of these old systems. It's getting taken out tomorrow, and we'll see if it helps at all after that. I suspect it won't, though, because no matter the time of day I've taken a shower it's ten minutes of hot water and that's it. Especially since in theory off-peak time would be, like, overnight...so my 50 gallon tank should have plenty of piping hot water for my morning shower, not only 10 minutes worth.
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Nov 4, 2019 17:13
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On to a new problem. I'm more confused than ever on my bathroom sink. Previously, if I turned on the hot water, it would start fine, then slowly taper off the pressure. Anything below about 3/4 open would eventually trickle down to nothing. In addition, the cold line would start cold, then get hot, then back to cold. In the basement, there was this weird connection between the two lines:  I wanted to get rid of it to see if it fixed both issues.  I had to do it kind of terrible like that, because despite turning off the water supply for the whole house, AND the cold supply into the hot water tank, to prevent possible back-pressure, and the supply coming out of the tank, I had water coming out of my taps after opening them up to relieve pressure. I had all faucets open, but it would not stop trickling. Maybe at a rate of like 1/2 cup a minute or something. Not fast, but more than 0. After cutting the pipe, it was coming out onto me and the basement floor so I had to work fast to put the cap on the cold supply on the right. I was assuming it would flow out even faster if I cut "behind" that weird crimped part. Now the sink flow is terrible...this is both faucets on at full open:  (Yes, my sink and faucet are gross, bathroom remodel is next on my list, which is why I started this stupid "fix the weird hot/cold water issue" project.) So that little weird connector pipe somehow provided extra hot water pressure to the cold side and extra cold water pressure to the hot side? Or something? The stop valves under the sink are fully open, too. I guess the next step is to replace the faucet, at least temporarily since I'm getting a new vanity, and see if it's still low flow. The kitchen faucet and tub are flowing normally. Oh, and also, more of this black, carbon-looking stuff from when I replaced my kitchen faucet is flowing out of the bathroom faucet now:  (That's not my kitchen sink now, that was from a month ago when I replaced that faucet, just giving a picture to show had bad it was.) When I replaced the kitchen faucet, it only came out for the first few minutes, then stopped. Here, it keeps coming out. Every time I turn on the faucet, the first "burst" of water is greyish-black, then goes clear. I've let it flow for several minutes but still has that when first turned on. Here's what it looks like under the aerator:  But most of the crud is smaller than those holes. So it seems like it happens when I turn off/on the house water supply...or cut into a pipe? I think the latter, because there wasn't any more black stuff in the kitchen faucet, just the bathroom. Honestly, at this point regardless of the rest of it I'm getting a plumber to replace my main supply valve since it can't close all the way...and try not to think about why there's black carbon in my pipes...I'll probably replace it all with PEX. DrBouvenstein fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Nov 5, 2019 |
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Nov 5, 2019 02:41
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30 TO 50 FERAL HOG posted:think its ghosts Well, could be ghosts that keep the shut off valve from working, but the slow trickle was just a cruddy old faucet. Swapped it out for the new one I was waiting to install until I got the vanity and was ready to redo the bathroom, and it flows fine now.
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Nov 8, 2019 17:57
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After replacing both elements in my water heater last night, I noticed tonight they're is a little bit of water leaking from the pressure relief valve. Not a lot, maybe a half cup over the past day? Should I bother trying to fine tune the temp setting to stop that, or just replace it? Or would potentially a cold water expansion tank help? I currently have none, but also, as far as I can tell, don't have a check valve or pressure regulator that would stop expansion back into the city water supply, so I'm not sure it would help.
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Nov 16, 2019 01:29
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BubbaGrace posted:What is your temperature set at? I tried to go for 120...the dial has 125 marked so slightly under that. And the max on the thermostat is 150 so it's not like I'm near the max or anything.
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Nov 16, 2019 14:59
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Motronic posted:You're the one who opened it to help drain it down, right? I cringed when I read that. Cool, it has been replaced. Glad it was a top valve because man, does my tank drain slow for some reason, even with a sink and tub faucet all the way open to hot.
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Nov 16, 2019 23:52
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SourKraut posted:Also, why do you need to go through any joists with PEX? It should be flexible enough to allow you to go under vs. through, and there are clamps you could use for this. Probably because: mcgreenvegtables posted:I am eventually going to finish the ceiling in this room.
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Dec 2, 2019 18:18
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B-Nasty posted:What are the black ring ones? Are those like a Sharkbite knockoff? Those look like the standard, branded SB caps, which as Nitrox said, are perfectly fine for copper unless your local jurisdiction has some special hatred for push-fits in general. Yeah the package said they were perfectly fine for copper, though I guess when I was fiddling around cutting the pipe and capping them off, I moved a piece too much and now a t-connector that goes to the cold supply for the faucet leaks...not a lot, so not worrying about it now...a take out container on top of the washer collects it all, only gets like 1/4 full before between laundry days so I just dump it into the washing machine when I do a load. If my mains shut off ACTUALLY shut off my cold water I'd have fixed it by now, but since it doesn't, it's not worth the annoyance. Really should get a plumber out here to fix that, unless anyone thinks I could get the city to shut off water to my house from the street connection for, like, 2 hours myself?
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Jan 7, 2020 21:00
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BubbaGrace posted:Did you ream the copper after cutting it? If not, then it is possible you punctured the O-Ring inside of the fitting. No, I reamed those bad boys good, definitely leaking from a nearby T fitting. Other plumbing question: My toilet has recently started requiring me to hold down the handle to flush for a long time...like, several seconds. I previously was able to just push and release and it'd flush completely. What might have changed this behavior? It's annoying to have to stand there with my finger on the handle for 4-5 seconds. I'm a busy man! Is there any adjustment I can make to the float or flapper to fix this?
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Jan 16, 2020 16:31
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When I turn on my kitchen faucet, the water pressure makes it rotate to the left. It's one of these style faucets with the integrated sprayer: Do I just need to tighten up the nut under the sink that holds it all together? I wasn't sure if that nut also affected the "tension"/tightness of the faucet head's rotation.
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Mar 4, 2020 19:35
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I just installed a new bathroom sink+vanity, and I'm having trouble figuring out how to get the drain to connect. Here is what's under there now:   The blue drain from the new sink (technically it came with the faucet, a Delta Vesna) is 1 1/4" PVC. The horiztonal drain pipe from the wall is 1 1/4" metal...in theory. I bought just a metal 1 1/4" P trap kit and it wasn't even close to fitting anything. I tried to put the P portion onto the sink drain and it slides right off, no way would it be water tight. And similar with the wall drain. I put the horizontal piece that came with the kit into it, with the nut and plastic washer, and after it was tight I could slide it right out, though it was slightly tighter than the metal-on-PVC connection. In addition, the height for everything is really off...the wall drain is just so loving low, I think I can get it to work if I can manage to get a vertical extension on the sink drain but it will be practically hitting the floor of the vanity (the vanity has a drawer on the very bottom, so the wall drain wasn't as low "relatively" to the bottom of the old vanity. Here's a close up of where the wall drain goes in:  Looks like a big brass nut? Nut sure if I tried hard I could unscrew the pipe from it? DrBouvenstein fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Mar 21, 2020 |
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Mar 21, 2020 22:50
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Coming in here to see how screwed I might be. I'm just trying to install a new tub faucet/handle/shower head set, and ran into an issue the PO/old contractor left for me. I removed the old tub spout, and the pipe it was attached to (just via sliding on and then tightened with a set screw) then went back inside the wall. There was a bunch of old caulk around where the pipe came out through the finished tub wall, and it had degraded so once I removed the spout, the tension holding it all in place was gone and it sank back into the wall. Now I'm left with not enough pipe to attach the new OR old spout to.  That's what it is now, maybe 1/2-3/4" out from the finished wall? Here's the attachment piece I'm supposed to slide onto the remaining pipe for the new faucet to screw onto:  As you can see, the pipe is over an inch short of how long it needs to be. It doesn't have to go all the way the length of that adapter, but it has to go just past where it has the hexagonal sides where the set screw is to tighten it down. I THINK I can fix this via cutting an access panel in the closet opposite the shower wall. I didn't want to have to, but oh well, I guess at least it will be there for any potential future plumbing issues? Once I have the hole cut, my plan is for my girlfriend to push on the pipe so it sticks back out to where it was, then I can push the adapter on, tighten down the set screw, and then screw the faucet on. The hole in the wall is big enough that it will sink the adapter back into the hole, so I think I'll have to have her keep pushing on the pipe until I get the faucet slightly screwed onto the threads so that it can then stop the pipe from going back in. Of course, all that hinges on having enough "slack" in the pipe so I can attach the adapter. If there's not enough slack, I'm not sure what I can do...I don't think I'd be able to "reach around' to the front to de-solder and then re-solder on a longer piece of pipe...so I guess I'd have to pre-construct a pipe with the 90 degree elbow on it, and then go back up to the valve body and de-solder and re-solder in the new piece up there? DrBouvenstein fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Nov 20, 2022 |
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Nov 20, 2022 01:59
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PainterofCrap posted:Ja re-reading this from the other thread: get a piece of wire (coathanger?) around the vertical section (probably at the top) loop the wire around something to protect your hands (a rag, a stick, a pair of vise-grips) and have your GF hold it under tension long enough to attach the slip-on union & tighten it down. Yeah I actually think I'll do both, even if I can get a stiff wire around it. Because I'm not sure just how much pipe is in there, I'm not 100% certain I can get the new one on, since with the adapter piece it needs a longer length of pipe then the old one. So I'll try to get the wire on it, pull, and then reattach the old faucet so I have a working tub and shower. Then at my leisure I can install that access panel and then do whatever need to do for the new faucet after that.
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Nov 20, 2022 17:40
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God dammit. I thought that overflow covers would have universally-sized screws. They don't. The old one was a "single screw" style, and had a small bracket that screwed into the two existing screw-holes:  But those two screws are smaller than the screws that came with my new one:  Guess I should have stuck with the one-screw style.
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Aug 14, 2023 19:51
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Edit: got a good rec. In the fox it fast thread.
DrBouvenstein fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Oct 3, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 15:45
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I want to finally get around to installing a cold-water expansion tank in my home. It's a 1969 build, most of the plumbing I THINK is still original (other than the water heater)? 1/2 copper all around. It's a single story ranch, one bath, so I probably don't need a very large one? I have noticed once or twice a few drips from the hot water tank pressure relief pipe, which I've read MAY be a result of pressure fluctuations and could be mediated with an expansion tank? I also get some pipes moving/shaking when taps are turned off/on (mostly the washing machine. ) I don't know it's officially "water hammer" or just regular old "knocking/banging", but I'm hoping an expansion tank could also help with that? I would put it basically right as the cold water enters the home, just past the whole-house shut off valve, right? It looks like they all tend to connect via 3/4 MIP fitting...I'm guessing there probably isn't a Tee fitting that is 1/2 copper on the "pass through" section and 3/4" female MIP on the Tee? So I'd probably just get a regular 1/2 tee, and then on the bottom of that Tee use a 1/2 copper to 3/4 Female MIP adapter?
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Oct 24, 2023 17:30
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