Why I hate plumbing 2.

One Sunday morning (March 25th) I found puddle of water at the base of the wall containing the water supply lines to the upstairs bathroom. The drywall was soaked so I just cut a section out to get to the pipe and cap it off. (more about that later). I could then see that the water was coming thru the hole between the first and second floor for the cold water pipe. There is no access to the pipe from the second floor because it comes up in the outside wall behind the bathtub, but I guessed the joint was leaking where the pipe turns upstairs.

 The pipe is a grey 3/4" poly that I have since learned "they don't make that anymore". I turned the main off and figured I'd cap the pipe off and just not use the upstairs bathroom for now. Because it was Sunday morning at about 11:00 I went to the local Ace where they did not have anything for this "old stuff" (the house is about 16 years old!) The helpful hardware man there said he didn't know anything about plumbing (he was right) and suggested I use this giant compression fitting thing to make a cap. I was dubious about it staying on but he insisted it would work so I bought it.

It did work and when I inspected it after I turned the water back on there were no leaks. After about five minutes though it blew off with a loud bang and there was a lot of screaming and squawking from the bird and family as I ran outside and turned the main off again.

Good thing I put in that new valve in the ground during I Hate Plumbing Part One.

There was more water in the wall again, and some in the bird cage so I sucked it all up again with the shop vac before coming up with another way to hold the plug on. I put the cap back on as tight as possible and made a strap with a hose clamp and strip of tin to help hold it on and then set the whole thing in a frame to hold it together.

Don't laugh cause it held for 2 days until I could find the right plug for it. Monday after trying Lowes and Home Depot and talking to some more helpful hardware men who didn't know anything about plumbing I went downtown to Dixie plumbing in Macon. They have been in business for about 100 years in the same location and everyone said they would have the right cap.

When I got there I was told (besides "they don't make that anymore") that they had just sold out to Ferguson plumbing and moved all of their stock way over to the other side of town off of 475. All they had there now was irrigation stuff. Since it was about 4:30 and I couldn't make it across town before closing I put it off for the next day and was then finally able to get the correct plug. It turned out to be just a brass push on thing that digs into the plastic but it seems to hold well.

Once again the guy at Furgeson told me that "they don't make that anymore" but he also said he had everything needed to convert to pex or copper or whatever. He said the problems with the poly that I have are almost alway at the joints, which use those crappy crimp rings.

Since it now looked like I would either have to pull up the bathtub or pull off the siding upstairs to fix a pipe that may fail again later we decided to chuck the tub and put in a corner shower stall. We didn't like the tub/shower curtain/tile combo up there anyway and the boys don't need a tub so it seemed like the thing to do while replacing the pipes going upstairs.

So I had to remove the tub and surrounding tile. I was able to remove the tile pretty much in three big sheets after busting it loose from the tub, cutting it away from the surrounding drywall, and prying it off of the studs.

The tub was not going to come straight out though so I decided to tilt it on end where it sat using prybars, blocks, and 2X4s to lever it up.

After I finished with this part and the boys were in bed DeAnne asked me to check out the buzzing noise in the master bath. It sounded like a wasp nest under the tub. I went outside and then under the house and darnit the pipe under out tub is leaking THE SAME WAY! This tub is a jacuzzi type though so I was able to pull one of the panels off the side and sure enough water was spewing right at the 90 joint where the pipe comes thru the floor. I turned off the water for the night and turned it on long enough in the morning for us to get ready for school and work.

I picked up another of those neat "Shark Bite" connectors that I used to plug the other pipe. These things have teeth inside and a seal that grips the pipe and seals tighter when the water pressure is applied. If they had used this type of connector to start with I might not be having these problems now, but I'm afraid now that not only the joints are failing but in places the pipe itself.

I got a 3/4" 90 thinking I would just fix the downstairs tub but when I started cutting the old 90 out the pipe just fell apart on both sides. Then it broke under the house so I just went under there capped that one off too. It's looking like I will end up replacing most of that pipe down there.

When I finally got back to the upstairs tub I  was able to lever it up to about 50 degrees and then tip it the rest of the way myself without much trouble. This in fact is the method the ancient Egyptians used to remove their own bathtubs!

Now that it's on end I can get a dolly under it and roll it to the stairs where we will execute a controlled slide to the bottom. I think I'll wait for more help than Dennis and Kenneth for that part.

I Really Hate Plumbing now but there is still a lot to go. Thankfully Dad will be here this weekend to help out.

Continued on next page...