Over the last couple months Dad & I have made several trips out to help a friend who is finishing his basement. I had agreed to help him with the electrical work, and was talked into helping him with the plumbing for the basement bathroom.
The first couple trips, back in March, were spent completely on electrical work. These all went very well and we got quite a bit accomplished. We returned last Thursday to help with a little electrical, but also to get started on the plumbing work. The bit of electrical we took on went very quick and relatively smoothly, so we switched over to the plumbing.
I had the bright idea of cutting into the existing lines first, T-ing off of them and up to a shutoff valve so we could make sure that stuff all worked before messing with all the new stuff. I had forgotten to bring my PVC pipe cutter, so we were using my battery sawzall. Seemed like a good idea at the time. I get up on the ladder and choose to cut into the hot line first. Unfortunately, the hot line was right up against a support, so I had to start my cut on the side. So I positioned myself on the ladder with the sawzall right in front of me so I could have a good look at the pencil line I was trying to cut on. I started cutting and, before I really got very far in I was suddenly met with a high-pressure blast of water right between my eyes. I quickly stumbled off the ladder while Dad & Ben frantically grabbed and re-positioned buckets to catch the spray. This effort was made more difficult, of course, by the fact that they were laughing pretty heartily at my display of plumbing prowess. After toweling off a little, I ran upstairs to open a couple of faucets to relieve a little of the pressure, before returning to the ladder to finish my cutting.
This should've been a sign that maybe we should just re-join that pipe and go home. But, no, we continued on in our blinding brilliance. We cut out a portion of that pipe, and repeated the procedure, though a bit more controlled, on the cold line. We glued in the T's, elbows, & valves and stood back to admire our work. We decided not to charge the system up right away, but to give all those joints a little time to dry. So we started on the other end in the bathroom making up some of the piping in there. During the course of this I managed to knock over the can of primer twice, making a rather smelly little mess on the concrete basement floor. Nuts!
Then we determined we did not have enough T joints, so we would not be able to tie it all together tonight. Oh well, it was starting to get a little late anyway.
So about 10pm we decided it was time to charge up the lines, test everything out, and head home. The glue had been given about an hour or so to dry, so this oughta be no problem. Ben turned the water back on to the house and we all stood around watching these little glue joints intently. After a minute or so I ran upstairs to make sure water was flowing good out of the faucets we had opened before turning them all off (to really pressurize the system). I returned to the basement & everything still looked good, so we started packing up our stuff to head home.
All of a sudden, about 2 minutes later we heard a pop followed by water gushing out of the pipes all over the basement floor. NUTS! We quickly scurried to shut off the water again and assess the problem & the damage. The damage was minimal and mostly amounted to mopping up water. The problem appeared to be that one end of the T-joint on the hot line popped out because it had not been fully inserted. So we decided to try to clean the inside of that joint out, cut and attach a slightly longer piece of pipe on that side, & re-glue the T. It seemed to go back together okay, so we let it sit a few minutes & then recharged the system to try it out.
Exactly the same result. NUTS! At this point we're starting to really question our intelligence. We're also questioning the glue & primer I had brought. So we switched to the other glue & primer, which looked more like what most of us had used before, and tried again. Same result again! And again we tried to clean it off & re-glue with the new glue, making sure we had everything good & clean first. But this time, before turning the system on, I thought to see how solid this glue connection was, so I twisted & pulled and the pipe popped right out. That shouldn't be.
We stand back a minute to assess the situation...its after 11pm, we don't have another T-joint to replace this one with, & Home Depot is closed. Nuts! Time to punt. We, fortunately, did have a handfull of couplings that were the right size, so we cut our T-joint out completely, coupled the pipe back up straight-through, and prayed that this would hold.
Praise God, it held pressure for at least 5 minutes. We packed our stuff, apologized profusely, and hung our heads as we headed out the door...it was 11:40pm.
I checked back the next morning and everything was holding solid, so we agreed to come back again soon to finish the job. Last night Dad & I returned. We had our pipe cutting tool, so no sawzall. We had the right glue, so no questions there. We knew what we were about, we got the job done. Everything tested out fine into the valves at the bathroom. Great! Now he can drywall the bathroom and we're not holding him up. That's how plumbing's supposed to work. Dad & I are still shaking our heads over the fiasco last week. Praise God that job is mostly done!
Once again, Sarah & I are leading a team to the Czeck Republic this summer for another English camp. We're firmly in the throws of raising funds for this trip right now, and as part of that effort, we're throwing another pig roast. So consider yourself invited!
