An Exceptionally Busy Weekend
I haven't written anything in about a week and a half because I've had some exceptionally lousy health and, more recently, I've been busy working on the house and out in the yard during my good health. Working on the house only happened after taking a few weeks off because of spinal problems. I managed to have a productive and busy weekend but I didn't get to touch a single thing that has been on my long 'to-do list'.
On Saturday afternoon, we had a broken water supply pipe due to repeated stress. The pipe just broke completely in two! The water was shooting out of the broken pipe like a garden hose with a nozzle on it! Water was everywhere!
Our vanity was filled with water, soaking everything in the vanity.
The flooring was soaked.
On the positive side, the adjoining bedroom is a construction zone so no finished materials were damaged. The problem was gaining quick and easy access at a time when we needed to move quickly to minimize damage.
The water seeped through the walls and soaked all the flooring and walls in this adjoining bedroom as well as in our water heater closet. To gain access to this water heater closet, we needed to remove crates of tools and building supplies that were stacked up against the shared wall and access panel. This area will eventually be our master bedroom suite but is currently our temporary storage area for renovating the rest of the house. (We are sleeping in a temporary master bedroom on the other end of the house.)
Two days have passed and most of everything has been dried but it is still damp and musty in these areas. The walls and flooring are slowly drying out again.
This issue occurred late on Saturday afternoon so we were still able to get to Lowes to purchase all the parts I needed to fix the problem. The only issue is that getting to Lowes and actually finding everything we needed and then getting back home ate up about two hours of time and two hours of precious energy (something I lack most of the time).
The area where the pipe burst was the supply pipe going into our whole house water filter. This is a complex shape that I originally built separately and then installed the entire filter and incoming and outgoing pipe fittings all at once because the area is so small... inside one end of our vanity. I needed to do the same this time.... remove the old unit... rebuilt it someplace else... then installed the unit as a whole.
I removed all the pipe all the way back into the water heater closet behind the wall where this water filter is located. I brought all of this old unit to Lowes with us so I could figure out exactly what I needed.
Naturally, Lowes was out of 1/2 inch 'Tees'... and, sometime recently, had changed manufacturers so now the two threaded connectors to connect inside our water heater closet are smaller with a finer thread. I had purposely used these threaded connectors just in case of an emergency like this... I could then just unthread the whole unit... rebuild it in a more comfortable location... then reinstall the whole unit by threading it back together. Now, with different threads, I would need to cut farther into our plumbing supply system.
I've been working on finishing another bedroom in the house so that bedroom is mostly cleared and only has a subfloor... so no finished flooring to ruin. This became my work area for rebuilding this whole unit.
I always have some parts on hand so this solved my problem with the threaded parts not matching. I was able to salvage one old connector and I had another connector on hand from when I had installed this the first time. I went to work cutting and fitting together a whole new unit.
When I had the old whole house water filter in my hands, I didn't feel too comfortable reinstalling this filter... it was corroded, loose and just felt like it was on borrowed time. I bought a new whole house filter while we were at Lowes and I replaced that with all the surrounding pipe and pipe fittings. I definitely didn't want a similar problem anytime soon!
I put together a new unit and had installed it within an hour after arriving home from Lowes. These pipes and fittings are CPVC so I would need to allow the glue to cure for two hours before opening up the main valve again and charging these new pipes. This waiting period is the frustrating part. You just rebuilt everything and reinstalled it all but you need to wait two hours before you can test it so that it can cure properly.
We ate some much needed dinner while we waited for my newly installed pipe fittings to cure. Of course, all this time, we had no water in the house... no working toilets, no kitchen sink, no running water at all. This meant we threw some frozen food in the oven (which was pretty nasty) and then just threw all the dirty dishes in the sink to be washed sometime after we had water again.
At 11:15 pm, I turned on the water main valve... one by one, I turned on valves to the filter... then turned on valves exiting the filter... no visible leaks in the vanity... but I had a leaking threaded connector in the water heater closet... I tightened that up once... still leaking... a little tighter... still leaking slightly... one last careful pull on the channel lock pliers... no more leaking!
We flushed the toilets... ran some water in the sinks... everything seemed to be working again!
We now have a new whole house water filter unit, however, this was not how I planned to spend my Saturday evening and night!
On Saturday afternoon, we had a broken water supply pipe due to repeated stress. The pipe just broke completely in two! The water was shooting out of the broken pipe like a garden hose with a nozzle on it! Water was everywhere!
Our vanity was filled with water, soaking everything in the vanity.
The flooring was soaked.
On the positive side, the adjoining bedroom is a construction zone so no finished materials were damaged. The problem was gaining quick and easy access at a time when we needed to move quickly to minimize damage.
The water seeped through the walls and soaked all the flooring and walls in this adjoining bedroom as well as in our water heater closet. To gain access to this water heater closet, we needed to remove crates of tools and building supplies that were stacked up against the shared wall and access panel. This area will eventually be our master bedroom suite but is currently our temporary storage area for renovating the rest of the house. (We are sleeping in a temporary master bedroom on the other end of the house.)
Two days have passed and most of everything has been dried but it is still damp and musty in these areas. The walls and flooring are slowly drying out again.
This issue occurred late on Saturday afternoon so we were still able to get to Lowes to purchase all the parts I needed to fix the problem. The only issue is that getting to Lowes and actually finding everything we needed and then getting back home ate up about two hours of time and two hours of precious energy (something I lack most of the time).
The area where the pipe burst was the supply pipe going into our whole house water filter. This is a complex shape that I originally built separately and then installed the entire filter and incoming and outgoing pipe fittings all at once because the area is so small... inside one end of our vanity. I needed to do the same this time.... remove the old unit... rebuilt it someplace else... then installed the unit as a whole.
I removed all the pipe all the way back into the water heater closet behind the wall where this water filter is located. I brought all of this old unit to Lowes with us so I could figure out exactly what I needed.
Naturally, Lowes was out of 1/2 inch 'Tees'... and, sometime recently, had changed manufacturers so now the two threaded connectors to connect inside our water heater closet are smaller with a finer thread. I had purposely used these threaded connectors just in case of an emergency like this... I could then just unthread the whole unit... rebuild it in a more comfortable location... then reinstall the whole unit by threading it back together. Now, with different threads, I would need to cut farther into our plumbing supply system.
I've been working on finishing another bedroom in the house so that bedroom is mostly cleared and only has a subfloor... so no finished flooring to ruin. This became my work area for rebuilding this whole unit.
I always have some parts on hand so this solved my problem with the threaded parts not matching. I was able to salvage one old connector and I had another connector on hand from when I had installed this the first time. I went to work cutting and fitting together a whole new unit.
When I had the old whole house water filter in my hands, I didn't feel too comfortable reinstalling this filter... it was corroded, loose and just felt like it was on borrowed time. I bought a new whole house filter while we were at Lowes and I replaced that with all the surrounding pipe and pipe fittings. I definitely didn't want a similar problem anytime soon!
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| New whole house water filter and fittings in our bathroom vanity. |
We ate some much needed dinner while we waited for my newly installed pipe fittings to cure. Of course, all this time, we had no water in the house... no working toilets, no kitchen sink, no running water at all. This meant we threw some frozen food in the oven (which was pretty nasty) and then just threw all the dirty dishes in the sink to be washed sometime after we had water again.
At 11:15 pm, I turned on the water main valve... one by one, I turned on valves to the filter... then turned on valves exiting the filter... no visible leaks in the vanity... but I had a leaking threaded connector in the water heater closet... I tightened that up once... still leaking... a little tighter... still leaking slightly... one last careful pull on the channel lock pliers... no more leaking!
We flushed the toilets... ran some water in the sinks... everything seemed to be working again!
We now have a new whole house water filter unit, however, this was not how I planned to spend my Saturday evening and night!
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