Little Additional Project

As I've mentioned in this blog previously, we've been in the process of getting a new water supply to the house which has caused months of chaos not only in our neighborhood but for our schedule as well as for our home.  

They dug up the roads all summer long to install a new water main so we were trapped at home every now and then.  On a good day, we'd have a detour and very rough roads to get out of our neighborhood.  

After installing the new water main in (well... far underneath) the street, they dug up each resident's property from the street to the house to lay pipe and then install water meters at the front each house.  Now we are dealing with them connecting each house to the new water meters at the front end of our house.  

For us, unfortunately, we need the new water main to reach all the way toward the back end of the house.  In order to get the water back to where the old water pipe comes up from underground, they had to run about 60 feet of pipe through our crawl space from the front end of the house at the road to the back end of the house.  

We're in the north so there is a major concern of freezing pipes in the winter months especially since our crawl space is not heated and will not be heated.  Consequently, they have wrapped the 60 feet of pipe in our crawl space with insulation and heat tape.  That is a long stretch of heat tape!

Last week, I was able to walk around our house with one of the plumbers to decide the best way to connect to our house.  I already had some ideas of a new place to bring the water line up into the house so I expressed these ideas to the plumber.  He happened to agree that my thoughts were the best way to attack this problem.  He did, however, recommend that we connect the heat tape to electricity inside our house rather than in the crawl space.  He explained that we could then easily unplug the heat tape during the warmer months and then plug it back in for the long winter months.

After this conversation with the plumber, I decided the best idea would be to install a dedicated outlet for power to the heat tape right above where the water main will be entering the house.  This is the little square closet where we have our water heater installed.  The current main enters the house under the master bathroom but then the water line runs about four feet through the bottom of the vanity to this small closet where the water heater is installed.  I recommended we come up right into the little closet with the water heater rather than coming up into the master bathroom.  This way we bypass that four foot stretch of unnecessary pipe which will make it easier for me to renovated this master bathroom.  This also allows us to also avoid/bypass our current main shut-off valve inside the house which is so corroded that I worry about how long it will last.  I have since added a new shut-off valve but left the old corroded one in place (for good reasons I won't get into here).  

Getting at this little closet where the water heater is installed will be behind a two foot wide, floor to ceiling shelving unit so access isn't going to be quick and easy.  The shelving unit is design to simply roll out away from this wall so I will have access but it still won't be "quick and easy instant access".  It will require a few minutes to access.  To make it easier to turn the heat tape on and off for seasonal changes, rather than plug it in and unplug it I decided to add a wall switch that is accessed in the adjacent floor to ceiling wall shelving unit.  Having this wall switch in the back panel of this adjacent shelving unit will keep it away from little hands playing with wall switches but it will still allow me quick and easy access to turn the heat tape on and off.  Running this new electrical line was yesterday's little project.

On the positive side, I have not yet renovated this end of the house due to various reasons (health problems, COVID pandemic, lumber prices during the pandemic, supply problems, etc) so running new electrical wiring was pretty easy.  Well...  my spinal injuries weren't all that happy but it was far easier than having to run wiring through finished walls.

The down side was that my health has been quite poor since the wedding we attended last weekend.  Consequently, this little project required a long nap in the middle of the project.  I really have been feeling quite lousy since returning home from the wedding weekend and yesterday was no different.  I had to stop work after an hour or so to take a two hour nap.  When I awoke, I went back to work and finished up the project within the following hour.  

So, now we have a wall switch placed high on the wall near the ceiling that controls a new outlet where we will plug in the new heat tape.  The paneling seen in the photo, below, is the old paneling on this unfinished wall.  This wall will eventually be wall to wall, floor to ceiling, shelving units in our new renovated bedroom when I can get back to renovations.  The wall switch in the photo will be mounted on the back panel of the adjacent shelving unit.  I'll know this switch is there but it won't be visible to anyone else who might accidentally turn this switch to the off position which would cause our pipes to freeze.  Also, I plan to label the wall switch so everyone who can read will know what it controls.

The above wall switch controls the new duplex outlet shown in the photo below.  The heat tape will enter the house through the floor below this outlet so we will plug the heat tape into this new outlet.  And, the new outlet is controlled by an easily accessible wall switch.  

Now I need to wait for the plumbers to get to our house for connection to the new water main.  They should be at our house around Thursday this week, if they stay on schedule, of course.  Now I'm ready for them so that is good.

I hope to get to doing more plumbing work in this unrenovated room this coming spring.  I'll be running plumbing through one of the unfinished walls to the back end of the house so we can install an outdoor shower at this back end of the house outside our new master bedroom suite.  (Every time I work in the yard during the hot summer months I wish we had an outdoor shower...  especially now that Vermont is home to many ticks.  I'd rather remove my clothing and shower outside!)  

I'll need to get a dumpster here for when I start this next phase of renovations though.  We've been using this unrenovated room as a temporary storage facility for what is now mostly junk.  It is a lot of boxes of stuff that can go right into a dumpster.

I managed to accomplish another small improvement to the house though so that is good!  I'm really looking forward to this water main project being fully completed.