Water Woes, or an Idiot Tries Plumbing Part 2

Water Woes, or, an Idiot Tries Plumbing

In a previous post about frozen pipes, I said that I had dodged a bullet at the house and was nicked by a bullet at the cabin. Wrong. Now, as Paul Harvey says, the rest of the story:

Cabin --

Due to a previous plumbing problem a couple of years ago, I has forced to cut loose from the water lines in the concrete slab and run a PIX line (that is NEVER supposed to freeze and burst) through the attic and into the bathrooms. The PIX line attaches to a PVC pipe coming from the ground with a brass "el" fitting and goes through the outer wall and into the cabinet under the sink. A "T" connection from there carries lines other places. The outside PVC was insulated, but the insulation did not seal well against the weatherboarding of the outside wall, and that is where the line burst and froze.

PIX is not glued like PVC: the connections are mechanical, not glue. "This will be easy," I thought: "just disconnect the line from the 'T' connection under the sink and from the 'el' outside, pull it out of the wall and install a new piece of pipe".

Wrong.

I went to the local building supply store (not a "big box") where employees can actually give advice. And got the necessary tools and parts for the repair job. Using the "disconnect tool" I disconnected the damaged line from both the inside and outside connections, and proceeded to pull it from the wall. It moved about an inch and caught on something. I told my wife, who was inside the cabin, to push from her end. She did, and nothing happened. "Push harder," I yelled. She yelled back, "I am sitting on the floor and pushing as hard as I can with my foot!"

Hum.

I am a member of the "If-it-won't-budge-hit-it-with-a-bigger-hemmed-or-spray-on-more-WD-40-club, so I clamped a pair of "Vice-Grip" pliers onto my end, sat on the ground, braced both feet against the wall, yelled a weight-lifters grunt and pulled with all my might -- and the pipe emerged from the wall. "I got it," I yelled! No, you didn't, Paula replied, It is still on the inside and I am pushing against it."

"Darn" (or something like that.)

I looked into the hole and saw a brass ring that was slightly larger than the hole. It looked like a mechanical connector. Someone, it appeared to me, had spliced the line INSIDE the wall. Why would they do that? I had pulled so hard that I had pulled my end of the pipe from the connector.

I chucked a drill bit slightly larger than the hole into my drill and enlarged the hole. The brass fitting was still hung up. I enlarged the hole: same problem. I enlarged it again, and again, until I could get my entire hand into the wall -- and found the problem: Not only was there a junction of pipes under the sink, there was one INSIDE the wall, and I was pulling against a "T" connector. I was going to have to remove weatherboarding from the wall in order to get at the connection.

Dark was approaching, so I did the only sensible thing -- what I should have done to begin with: I called the man who installed it. I explained that it was a cabin, I knew he had to serve people whose houses were without water; I had a place to live with running water, so I could wait -- I thought, wrongly.

The rest of the story in the next post.