subject: Are You Cut Out For Plumbing? [print this page] I love to do renovations on my home and see the benefits of a nicely done job to improve or update a part of my home. I don't love to live through it, but I do love the results. Recently though, I was doing some updates in my kitchen and came across a bit of a sticky situation.
The kitchen in my place used to have a dropped ceiling. It was extremely old looking and made the kitchen area feel tiny. I knew that that drop ceiling had to go.
One fateful day about a year ago, I decided to pull out the sledge hammer and start hammer out the roof. To my surprise, there was a lot to remove. Eventually I got to the plumbing. Because the builder had the room to put the plumbing where he pleased, it did just that.
I had pipes and drains everywhere in the drop ceiling. Eventually I had to call in someone that had more plumbing experience than I had. I did not think that it might be that difficult, but I was wrong. Once the drop ceiling was removed, the space allotted for water pipes, drains, kitchen venting, electric and eventually hot air venting had to share similar twelve" of space.
I was truly stuck. Not only that, it was near a wall that I didn't not want to be removed and it impeded my path in that direction. Finally, I found myself working against some of the supports in the roof.
After about two hours of consultation with a friend who had experience rerouting plumbing, he came up with a plan. The next day, we turned off the water and started to cut out the old plumbing.
It did not take more than 2 or 3 hours to run into some real issues. One of the vent pipes that went up towards the top floor, become unattached some how. It needed me to go up and open a large section of wall to work out just what occurred. As it seemed, the venting pipe's glue had damaged away in a join while we were manipulating the pipes. Hence we had to mend the plumbing on the second floor too!
It was not a difficult problem though . After roughly an hour, we had resolved the issue and moved forward. Next, came putting in the new piping in the confined space. Even for my chum, it was challenging. So much stuff and so very little space.
We tinkered with the path of the piping for a couple of hours and ultimately pieced out the best route with the least hassles. After everything was clear, it looked rather good! Next came the acid test - turning the water back on.
Everything appeared to work rather good! No obvious leaks. But I have learned my lesson here before. I waited for a few days to be certain all was well. As it seemed, the drain on the tub upstairs started to leak. After a little bit of torquing on the drain clamps though , all was well.
Hence when re-building and doing plumbing, ensure you consider what has to be done!
