Oh the joy of plumbing
 

I spent the last two day under my house redoing the plumbing. was going to have a plumber do it, but it was $600 a fixture and since I had six fixtures to hook up it was not in my budget. He was nice enough to walk me through the steps and the code info for hooking everything up correctly. He even didn't charge me anything for coming out and spending two hours with me. I got totally rain out today, so water lines are next weekend and then the inspection can be done. Now that the house is sitting on a foundation the crawl space has some room to move around under it.

Looks good, PVC is nice to work with. Not fun working in a crawl space though. Water lines going to be copper? HD use to have copper fittings with the solder already in them, all you have to do is heat the joint up. A little more expensive but nice in a crawl space where you're trying to sweat an upside down joint.

I know you're on a budget, but for copper pipe there is a company that makes "shark" fittings. They literally push-lock tight onto the end of a copper pipe. No solder no leaks. They make them in any fitting as well.

I have been looking at both opitions. The shark bit fittings are great I have used them before. Or you can now use the pex pipe with the clamp on fittings that you use a special tool to do it. The only draw back to using the pex pipe or some form of plastic pipe for water is the long term effect of chlorine on it. Years ago they had polybutelyne or PB tubing gray in color and failed after a few years and was band. The pex can freeze and not break unlike the cooper that will break. I'm still leaning toward cooper at this point. Mice and rats will chew through the pex pipe if it is not protected.

That recalled plumbing was called "Quest" . I built a eight-unit back then that they payed me twice to plumb it ..... gotta love it! LOL

Primary concept for plumbing "sh*t runs downhill and payday is on friday" ..... I keep blowing it on the second part! LOL

You forgot "don't bite your fingernails"

Is PVC okay for water supply? White PVC is so easy to work with and won't split like copper from freezing. I have a piece of copper running under the deck from the house, about 15'. It has more patches and splices than you can imagine. I try to get it drained every year but seems it still freezes and splits in the winter.

Nice part is the deck is barely high enough for me to slide under. About 20' from the end were I can get under to where the pipe is.

Wrap a heat tape around it with the pipe insulation and you should be good to go. I believe PVC is still allowed, but not the 1st choice anymore.

Copper is usually used for grounding the electrical system, you need to be careful not to isolate the ground.... I'd pass on using pvc and yes it freezes and splits just like copper.

When I ran the new water line in my current house I lost the electrical ground. It is no longer code to ground a electrical box to a water pipe for that reason. In Oregon you have to have two electrical ground rods ten feet apart and the grounding rods are ten feet long. What joy they are to drive in the ground in some area's.

Ray is one of those grounds allowed to be a piece of rebar stubbed out of the foundation (called a ufer) when the foundation is poured? Oregon has a reputation for being pretty stringent in building codes .... especially septic.

Not sure if you can have the ground in the foundation. I have not seen it being done that way here so far. I know at our beach house I just poured a new foundation and they still had me do two ground rods away from the foundation.

I had to drive one 8' rod when I wired the hot tub. The ground here is loaded with rocks of all sizes. I was lucky though, it went straight in without hitting any rocks big enough to stop it.

Ray:

A friend of mine that does electrical work told me about this trick for ground rods. Have a liter bottle of water with you and as you drive the rod down into the ground, pour a little water around it. It has been a while since he told me this and I may have left something out but this is what I remember him saying to do. We were just shooting the bull when the subject of driving the ground rod into the hard ground around our neck of the woods came up.

HTH,
Durand

If worst comes to worst they make a attachment that goes on a small Milwaukee jack hammer to drive them in. Rental yards have them .... but is it worth 40 bux to save all that hassle? LOL

Well I got to tear out half my plumbing today and start over. It didn't pass the inspection. Inspector didn't like the way I had the vents vented out. Cost me 50 dollars in new plumbing and now i will wee if it passes on Wednesday. Spent the last 3 days puting water lines in sewer again today. Hope work picks up. I don't have any work this week. Things look like they are getting slow already.

I've stayed at a holiday inn before. :D










The main water feed (copper) to my house broke a few years before I moved in, and it was replaced with a plastic 3/4" line that looks damn near like a garden hose. Our winters have become progressively colder each year. I'm a bit nervous about that thing freezing this winter.

Passed the plumbing inspection today and the under floor inspection, now onto putting the new walls up on the laudary room. Probably not this weekend since we are expecting over an inch of rain,

Ray

Glad it passed inspection. Now you get to move on and do even more work.

... rain? ... who needs it? LOL