Water Out of the Wall

This blog post is timely. Alas, I was in a hurry so I didn't take photos, so I'm using the video and graphic that I've found on the web.

Here's the scenario:

First nice day after a long cold winter. I see the hose is already attached, probably from that last warm snap in December or January when I hosed off the walk. I turn on the spigot. Hmm, no pressure in the hose...WHOA! There's water squirting out of the wall! Not good. I kill the water. I feared a broken pipe, but since the water only came out of the brick wall when the spigot was turned on, it seemed doubtful that I had a broken pipe.

A quick trip to the basement confirmed, but I turned the water off to the spigot anyway. Now, to fix...

Evidently, the spigot is called a "sillcock". The sillcock is actually a lot more than a faucet, as it is a mechanism that extends from outside the house to inside the house, with the valve actually inside the house. As a result, when I left the hose attached and the water froze and expanded, it blew out the sillcock and not the pipes inside. That was good.

So, we needed a new sillcock. How big? Well, first we remove the old one and see what we started with. Most plumbers sweat the sillcock directly to copper pipe. So, in order to get it out, you're going to need to un-sweat the pipe (break out the creme brule' torch), or cut it. I decided to cut the pipe. I've never sweated a pipe before.

Cutting the pipe as close to the wall as possible gives you some flexibility. You can use the same size silllcock and cut the existing pipe back and then sweat in another length of copper, or you can use a larger sillcock and then just cut the pipe back to fit where the silcock terminates.



The above video shows pretty much the same silcock failure and the repair is pretty good, too. I did mine differently.


First, I suspect that modern sillcocks fail with a frequency that suggests that one plan for replacement. Since I don't want to learn how to sweat pipes and anyway I didn't want to sweat the pipe to the sillcock, I needed to come up with an alternative.

Enter SharkBite fittings. It's a "push into place" fitting. No glue. No flux. No solder. You can join copper to copper or cpvc or pex. The fittings allow you to add a male screw or a female screw end fitting. Just measure, cut, deburr and emery board and then press fitting to pipe and you're done! And, you can undo your work with a $0.50 plastic tool!



So, since the sillcock I bought was 14" and had a male screw end, I was going to have to cut the pipe back and affix a female threaded end fitting. This would allow me to simply UNSCREW the sillcock if I needed to repair or replace. No unsweating. In goes the sillcock into the existing hole.

So, since the SharkBite female threaded end added roughly 3/8" to the pipe length after being installed on the pipe I marked the pipe 3/8" back from the end of the sillcock. Then I used a pipe cutter to carefully cut a nice clean end off the pipe.

I then deburred the pipe and took some fine sandpaper to the pipe end, inside and out. Then I wrapped the end of the sillcock with Teflon tape, 3 turns worth. From there I threaded on the female SharkBite fitting. Make sure you get this tight when you do it, or you'll be leaking.

Next comes the fun part. Go out side and make sure that the sillcock is facing the right way. Pull it out a little from the wall, and then apply a generous bead of caulk all the way around where the collar meets the wall. Slide the sillcock back flush and hopefully, you'll be able to use the same screws to screw the sillcock back in place.

Go back in the basement (or inside). There should be about 1/2" overlap of the SharkBite fitting over the copper pipe. There should also be a bit of give, allowing you to push the pipe back a bit so that you can slide it into the fitting. Once you negotiate the pipe into the fitting, push them together firmly.

Now comes the moment of truth! Close the sillcock valve and turn the water back on. Look at the fittings closely. If the screw on fitting is leaking, you're going to have to take it apart again (use that plastic tool), re-wrap the male fitting, and then screw it on TIGHTLY. Do not just try to tighten it without disassembling. You stand a chance of screwing things up royally if you do. After re-tightening the male/female connection, then slide the copper pipe back into the SharkBite connector snugly. If you have no leaks, you're done!

Next time, remember to detach the hose at the end of the season.

Had to move the wall.

OK, playing catch up here.

We met with our HVAC guru, (www.PeakHVAC.com) and we'd been trying to figure out the best way to heat and cool the house. We at first thought we'd head a vent and return on each side of the dining room fireplace, but it turns out we'd need a lot more space for a second vent to carry air to the 3rd floor and it would make the dining room all.... wonky. Also, it would mean branching out in the basement and taking half of the vent-age (my word, not Chuck Phaeler's from Peak HVAC, heh heh) to the north side of the house and half to the rear, and we'd be talking uber-soffets like an encompassing, but warm, octopus.

So we determined we could fit the HVAC main ductwork up from the basement, up through the northeast corner of the kitchen (practically unused space), into the northeast corner of the bath/laundry room, and then into the 3rd floor. This way, the ductwork stays in a central location, and only branches out from the 'trunk' at the level it is needed.

There was one problem though with the return that was planned for the kitchen wetwall.

Yeah.

Well, we planned the location of the kitchen wetwall ever so carefully, making sure that the wetwalls on the second and third floor would all like up and even distribute some weight. I'm, not kidding, we spent HOURS trying to determine the exact location for premium placement and ease of use. But did we go into the basement and check out the ceiling to make sure that the joists that ran throughout the house also matched up in the basement? Nooooo, that would have been way too smart. Way.

Yeah.

So we built the kitchen wetwall not only right on top of a joist, but to make it all the more painful, it was a double joist.

The plumbing that we so carefully planned for had to come up through the wetwall on the west, then back across over the kitchen to the east, then back up through the floor to meet the bathroom on the second floor. OK, plumbing disaster averted... but the HVAC? Not so easy.

A few days after we made the plumbing work-around, Chuck (the HVAC boss) made the call that we'd have to either move the wall, or we'd have to have an angled return in the dining room that stuck out about 3" on the floor and sloped back to the wall to get around the joist screw up.

We moved the wall.

Now I'm halfway tempted to tell the plumbers that we can now run the PVC up the wetwall the way it was supposed to go in the first place-- just to see the looks on their faces.

Today's agenda: Replace last two rotted floor joists on the first floor with 2x12" PTL (Pressure treated lumber), and start pulling up the rest of the old tongue and groove 1" flooring (wearing a mask this time so as not to kill myself by inhaling the mold on the underside THIS time.) Then overlay with two full sheets of 1/2" OSB ( laid out so as to overlap and not have the edges on the second layer line up with the edge of the sheets underneath, aka staggered layout) and finish sistering 2x6's to the rotted joists on the 2nd floor for floor supports, fix the holes with OSB, then laying single sheets of OSB for the final subfloor prep.

Unless I have to move another wall.

Warning: Head-Bone Connected to the Pain-in-the-Neck-Bone

So, we have a new if not completely finished roof. The interior stopped shipping water. Great news.

BUT, it is a fact of rehabbing life that when you fix something, you find the next weakest link in the chain of jerry-rigged repairs and jake-legged improvements, plus any naturally occurring problems. When a box gutter is dumping water out the wrong end, for instance, it doesn't send water down the downspout and into the drain out to the storm sewer. When you fix the box gutter, re-attach the downspout and then get a couple inches of heavy rain, you send hundreds of gallons of H20 down that drain. That drain that hadn't seen water in years. That drain that was badly clogged.

So, water was not running down the drain. I was unaware of that. For a while. Then, I heard water running. In the basement. Uh-oh...

It seems that some time ago, a prior owner attached a kitchen drain to the storm drain, just below the downspout, and not very well at that. Since there were hundreds of gallons of water coursing down with no way to get through the drain, the water found the next weakest link and that was around that former kitchen drain hookup, in the basement.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the water was coming in at the dirt end of the basement, actually in the crawl space, which we have currently exposed. It drained right into soil, so there was no real damage, but there's a funky smell and a bit of moisture lingering at the north end of the house.

The good news is our plumber, Bert. I called him, he came. He said he'd have to cut the concrete to get at the drain and that it would take a couple days to get to it. It took him one and they were done early in the morning. I had intended to take a few pictures, but they were in and out before I could move. They under-promised and over delivered. Me like. I'll be talking more about our plumber later.

One bit of upside is that they hooked up a "Y" connector so that I can drain water off the concrete patio and into the drain instead of down the walk or up against our house.

It could have been worse, so I'm thanking our lucky stars.

Now, back to furring and framing.