Plumbed

Continuing where my last post left off, today's post is about getting that additional bathroom rough plumbing done.

 

Rough Plan

under sink piping

I haven't really described this bathroom thing much other than where it would roughly go and what we demolished to make room for it. Ang and I intend to age-in-place in this house. That means, as we touch things, we consider how an old person might need things, and make plans accordingly. For example, I have heard that most home injuries happen in the bathroom. This is probably because you have wet tile, many obstacles and hard surfaces. To address all of this, we are pursuing a "wet room" concept that does not have a tub nor even walls around the shower. This means fewer obstacles and nothing to step over. To keep water from going everywhere, we will have a curtain, but there will be a floor drain and a hand-held nozzle too. In this way, if one of us is wheelchair-bound, the bathroom is ready. Otherwise, it is a simple lavatory with a toilet and sink, with a sink vanity that has more counter than sink. When the shower is not in use, the curtain will be pulled all the way to one end of the rod, leaving a large(-ish) open floor space. With that concept, we started demo, and then some construction and now the plumbing.

 

The Dig

toilet, floor drain

I spent 3 days digging my third trench this year, with this last one in the crap space. The others were the grey-water from the shop and the electricity/internet hookup from the house to the shop. Still, when the plumbers arrived, they needed to go to a different part of he crawl and expose the sewer. I knew that, and while I could have probably guessed where to dig and such, I also knew that it was highly probable that I would guess wrong and they would have to dig under there anyway. So, the first few hours on the first day, one of them was on his belly, digging out the original sewer line. At the end of the work, the spill went back into the cleared out space so for the most part, it looks the same as it did before they started. I think. I really don't like going under there, so I haven't checked. Yet.

 

The trench that I dug, however, ended up working out great for them. The photo on the bottom shows the waste pipe in the trench as do some of the others. Because of how little the pipes need to slope, however, I clearly over-dug. The flooring was still gone so they were able to do almost all of the work without having to get under the house, too. That last bit of sewer line and the hot/cold water feeds needed to be tied in, though.

 

Plumbed

routing under floor

The original plumbing estimate was for 3 days, and they were done in 2. They indicated that the trench plus all the flooring being gone made the work considerably faster. At this point, the rough-in plumbing is complete, supporting a toilet, a sink and a shower, with a floor drain. We had concerns that the main water feed would need to be upgraded. It was not needed, at least not yet. There was a concern that some of the original galvanized pipe might need to be replaced, leading to a much larger re-pipe effort. Similarly, that was not needed. In fact, because this galvanized pipe is from the late 1940's rather than the cheaper stuff from the 1960's and 1970's, it is holding up to time very well. The exterior of all of the pipe is rust-free and that pipe they needed to cut for tying in the new plastic to the new bathroom had no rust inside either. So, we will not need to do a full re-pipe for a long time. Honestly, since the kitchen and laundry behind it were re-piped a few years ago when we did those room upgrades, the only pipe remaining are the main feeds and the original bathroom. So, the scope of a re-pipe may not be as bad as your typical horror story.

 

Fixture Fixation 

shower, floor drain, toilet

Ang and I had been focusing on the foundation and wall locating and not on fixtures and such. So, when the plumbers arrived, they logically asked "where is the sink going"? Absent clarity on what we would use for a vanity, much less where we would acquire it, we went with "probably around here?", pointing at a spot on the North wall. We explained that we planned on something about 5 feet across with a single sink in the middle. They plumbed accordingly while we went looking in craigslist, fbmarketplace and the rebuilding center for a vanity that fit what we had just said. While we could have looked at brand new stuff at the big box building centers, we were skeptical of a new glue-board vanity withstanding a wet-room style bathroom. We were not really financially ready to take on the cost of a retail-priced all-wood piece either.

 

We were unable to find anything suitable, but at the rebuilding center we did score a functioning toilet ($35US) and a shallow overhead cabinet ($25US) that could be useful. If your reaction to a used toilet is "ew gross", you are not alone. We washed it with bleach water the moment it left the bed of the pickup truck. Add in $10US for a seat and another $20US for the inner workings (not going to reuse those either) and a wax ring, we will have a functioning toilet for around $75US. The cheapest toilet at HomeDespot is $100US, and this used one is much nicer.

 

rebuilding center vanity

Still without a vanity, we looked at the limited cabinetry that we still had in the garage from when we did the kitchen. When we bought that set, the rebuilding center included a few things which were not part of the "kitchen" but they deemed were part of the set. This included a 40" wide bathroom vanity and some overhead cabinets which looked like they were from a laundry. The overheads were attached to the south wall in the tiny attached garage. We had planned to use that vanity in the shop for a kitchenette or something, but we had a definite need now, and that was a maybe later thing.

 

Car Accounting

K'Lack: I am waiting on parts to do K'Lack's brakes. I expect to chase that in the next couple of weeks.

Hapy: still broken, sitting outside my shop waiting for me to have time to work on him. Honestly, I am waiting for the weather to turn because yard cleanup is so much nicer when it's not raining.

Frankie: I just got the O2 sensor. I will be replacing that soon. We are now getting weird errors about the driver-side tail light. I think the ground is bad.

Cedar's minivan: he did the gas vapor recovery system and started replacing the thermostat. We will return to the thermostat and maybe the sparkplugs before we call it winter road-ready.

Cedar's Subbie: we got it to pass smog (replacing o2 sensors) and now it's back to being his daily driver.

 

Wrap Up

pipes in trench

With the rough-in plumbing now complete, our friend Ray will soon return to install a floor. I will be staying out of his way. With the nice weather soon coming to an end, I have to paint the south-side barn doors or that exposed wood will get soaking wet all winter. I also have to get that bathroom vanity cleared from our overloaded garage, but I think that can delay a week or so while other work completes. Regardless, we are like many others this time of year: pushed hard by the boss-man all week and then on our days off we try to get a weeks worth of personal work done. It can't be. Even working your off-hours on work days has limited returns. Ultimately, I need to start setting lower expectations.

 

That's it for this time. Thanks, as always for following along-