Friday, April 22, 2016

Home Improvement Projects

Of all the projects I need to do around the house, there are two that I am simply dreading having to tackle, and both are plumbing related projects.  The first is replacing the water softener.  That is going to be a chore and a half mainly because I'll need to solder as well as shut off the water to do it.  Whenever the water gets turned off and then back on, sediment always ends up clogging up faucet screens.  Additionally, I worry I'll mess up a joint which will result in water leaking all over the place..  But that can certainly wait in the overall scheme of things.  It has need to be replaced for the past two or three years so a little while longer isn't going to hurt.

The more pressing issue is replacing the drain pipe from the downstairs bathroom into the main sewer line.  On the surface it looked like an easy fix.  However, the more I study what I need to do, I realize it will require busting a hole into the wall and breaking out the sawzall to cut off pipes.  the current set up has two 90° elbows in the wall, and in order to get them out I will need to cut the pipes into a couple of sections.  Putting a new pipe in looks to be easy on the surface, but I have found that is usually never the case.  hopefully I can get it pretty much assembled ahead of time so all it will take is sliding the pieces together and gluing the joints.  I plan on going to PVC pipe from the old steel pipes.  I think that will make it go easier too.  Then I will just need to worry about patching the hole in the wall.  But as I said, with almost every project I have ever done around the house, unforeseen problems always come up which leads to what was planned as being a one hour project taking an entire day (if not more).

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