New House Blog: Episode XXXXV - The Phantom Drip

Night had fallen, as it usually does at the end of the day, and both Becky and Bish were settled in their respective office chairs, working at their respective office computers (One of them may have been blogging). Seemingly out of nowhere a drip appeared.  Not an ordinary drip that can be seen - no this was a Phantom Drip, seen by no one but heard by all....

The Phantom Drip

Actually, I don't quite remember the exact details of our first hearing this phantom drip, but I do remember that we first heard the dripping at night, and one of us (not Becky) thought it was just harmless water dripping from our roof or our rain gutter.  The other one of us (not Bish) suspected that something more serious was happening.  Heeding the advice of the wiser of the two (not Bish in this case), we investigated outside and found nothing dripping from the roof or rain gutter.  In fact, from the outside we could not see or hear any dripping.  Once back inside we listened more closely and determined that the dripping was somwehere between Bish's office and the downstairs bathroom.  Since the only thing between these two rooms is the wall they share we could only come to the conclusion that this was somehow inside the wall.  Either that, or it was a genuine phantom drip that did not originate in this corporeal plane.

We deduced that if the dripping was a real, physical phenomenon the most likely place of its origin would be the shower plumbing for the upstairs bathroom.  This is the same plumbing talked about first in this Episode.  You may recall that we replaced the shower valve, shower head, tub spout, and in-wall piping.  We also added two shiny new shutoff valves and an access panel for ease of reaching said shutoff valves once the wall was closed up.  We opened the access panel and discovered that, yes, the dripping was a real, corporeal phenomenon, and it was coming from the in-wall plumbing for the shower.  D'oh!  We shut off the shutoff valves and opened up the wall.  The drip was coming from a connection between stainless steel pipe and flexible Plastic hose.  "No big deal," one of us (not Becky) thought, "I'll just cut some new plastic hose, tighten it down real tight, and that will be that."  So that's what I did, and we sealed up the wall again and turned on the water.  End of story.

And by end I mean middle.  For the phantom drip returned shortly after this.  This time, however, we knew exactly what the problem was and we quickly shut off the upstairs shower water before too much had dripped out.  This was the second time that my plastic-to-metal connection had failed.  Clearly something was fundamentally wrong with what I had done.  (I cannot share any of the blame for this with Becky.  This was my work, and my error in methodology and material).  In my haste to make the upstairs shower work, and because the shower head-to-tub spot pipe is tilted slightly off from 90-degrees, I elected to use a flexible plastic hose material that looked and felt like it would suit my purpose - it had good pressure and temperature specifications, and it was inexpensive.  Here's a picture of the plumbing with the old hose connectors showing, after I removed the old hoses (I do not want you to know what I was trying to use before). :)

I did the research I should have done months ago and I discovered the wonderful world of PEX.  PEX is the wonderful material that we should originally  have used to  make the final connections for our shower plumbing.  It would have saved us from ever experiencing the Phantom Drip and having to reopen the wall multiple times.  I researched PEX tubing, PEX tools, the methods of connecting, and what the different colors mean.  Here's a picture showing the pipes after all of the old hose connectors were removed.

I went to Home Depot and picked up my needed tools and supplies.  I chose to get the white PEX because the red and blue are only available in 25' rolls at Home Depot and the white is available in 5' and 10' lengths.  The red and blue are traditionally used to indicate hot or cold water lines, but the red, blue, and white are materially and structurally identical; the difference is only cosmetic.  Home Depot carries the Sharkbite brand of PEX, so this is what I bought, and I confirmed with the Home Depot plumbing guy that I should use 1/2" PEX with our 1/2" stainless pipes.

At home again and time to connect everything back up.  We found PEX to be very easy to work with.  Here's a picture showing the hot water line connected to the shower valve.  Please note that all hose connectors are brand new, PEX-specific connectors.

We had some volunteer helpers on this job.  Here are some pictures.  You may recognize them. :)

What's in this box?

Yup.  Looks like everything is here.

Did you ask me if you could borrow my PVC cutter?

One of our helpers also decided to inspect our work up close.

What's down there?

The final assembly went pretty smoothly, and before long we had everything connected and leak-free.

Time to seal up the wall.

The sheetrock

The sheetrock plus the tape

The sheetrock, tape, and joint compound

The access panel

Because this is in a closet that the public does not normally see we are not highly concerned with how this looks.  We may paint it at some future date.

Thus ends the saga of the phantom leak.  So far this is the only repair that has been necessitated by me doing it incorrectly the first time.  All of my other work is holding up, so far.

And thus ends the final Episode for 2012.  We bought our New House in May, we did a bunch of work, we moved in in late July, we did a bunch more work (but not as much as we did before moving), we dug up a bunch of ancient artifacts, and in general we have had, and are having, a great time in our New House. The New House Blog is officially on break for the Holidays, and it will resume in 2013.

May your Christmas and New Years celebrations be festive and fun for all.

    bIsh

New House Blog: Episode XXXXIIII - The Blackout!

It was not a dark and stormy night.  It was, in fact, a dark and calm evening, shortly before full sunset.  I was driving home from work, as I usually do when my work day is done, and I received The Call.  There had been a blackout!  A blackout at our new house, to be precise.  A mysterious blackout, to be more precise.  It was mysterious because it only affected Becky's home office and not the rest of the house.  It was doubly mysterious because none of the circuit breakers had tripped.  What would I find when I arrived at our new house?  What could possibly cause one room to go dark without tripping a breaker?  Would we be able to piece together what had happened and formulate a plan of action before it was too late?  Would we be able to restore power to Becky's home office in time?  And was time really running out for the successful resolution of this mystery?  The answers to these questions, and possibly others, can be found by reading...

The Blackout!

I arrived at home and we ate a quick supper (also known to some people as dinner) and then started our investigation.  Using a combination of process of elimination, sniffing outlets, and calling awesome brother Matt (a man with many years of professional electrical experience) for advice, we deduced what had caused the power outage in Becky's home office.

The victim: an innocent light switch by the office door.  It was not its fault that the pre-Bishopians had used inferior wiring techniques when the switch was installed.

The perp:  A powerful new ceramic space heater that was a birthday gift from a thoughtful husband.  The space heater requested that we not publish its picture for fear of possible reprisals.

The conclusion:  There was no malice involved on the part of the space heater.  It had simply caused a power surge that burned out some wiring in the light switch.

I think I see the problem.

Black = burned.

It appeared that the burning had originated where two wires were improperly spliced.







Since all of that room's electrical power comes through that light switch it naturally follows that burning out that light switch caused a complete loss of power in the room.



We got to work on the replacement light switch right away.  There was no real time limit, but Becky did want to be able to work the next morning.  We did not have any light switches in our stock of electrical supplies, so a quick run to OSH was necessary.

After cutting away all of the burned and damaged wiring in the old light switch j-box we did not have enough slack to even try to make new, proper splices, so we had to cut a new hole for the new light switch, mount a new j-box, add a length of romex to the romex coming down from above (which required a second new j-box) splice all of the wires together in the new j-box and connect and mount the new light switch.  Below is an illustrated version of these events.

The new hole

Look at that awesome splicing!

The old and new romex

The new splice (above) and new light switch

We know that this is not the prettiest thing you ever saw, but it is functional and safe.  We plan to prettify at some point.

One last look at the victim

More Blackout Items

Since we had to take off outlet covers to inspect them all for possible burning, we thought it would be a good time to replace the rest of the outlets in Becky's office (except for the one we had already replaced prior to moving in).  Here are some pictures of that project.

The old outlet comes off.

Look at that dust.

Happy new outlet

Satchmo likes to help out with home repairs.

Mounted and awaiting a faceplate

The Second Blackout

This was not really a true blackout in the sense that we lost power again: it was more like a blackout that is caused by light bulbs burning out.  In the big room we have two light fixture boxes (we don't know if there's a proper term available), and each light fixture box contains two twin fluorescent tube fixtures (I learned to spell "fluorescent" many many years ago).  The tubes in one fixture box had ceased all lighting functions.  This was not surprising to us, as we had not ever opened up the light fixture boxes to inspect the lighting inside.  Off to Home Depot for new fluorescent tubes (40-Watt) and new acrylic lighting panels.  The old lighting panels had become cloudy and brittle, so we decided to replace them.  The new panels had to be cut to size before we could insert them in the boxes.  The room is much brighter since we completed this project.  See for yourself.

The light fixture box after tube removal

We updated both light fixture boxes at the same time, but we only photographed one of them because they are both identical.

 I used my new homemade workbench  (first seen in this Episode) for cutting the light panels.

The light fixture box with new tubes

With new lighting panels

The Third Blackout

A third blackout?  Yes.  This one was also of the burned-out-bulb type.  The bulb in the main light fixture in the kitchen had ceased lighting.  We opened the cover and discovered that of the three light bulb receptacles, one had a CFL bulb, one was empty, and one contained only the metal base of a light bulb.  We also discovered that the fixture had what appeared to be old-style fabric covered wires.  We decided to replace it.  We did not take pictures of the old fixture.  It was about 24" in diameter, and the largest we could find at Home Depot was 16" in diameter, so there is a nice ring around the new light fixture where one color of paint stops and another begins.  We have no plans to paint the ceiling, and we like our new light fixture.

 This is the light fixture mounting box.  It is not quite flush with the ceiling, and it is a bit not-level.  It is, however, quite securely attached.  Because of this, and our lack of desire to open the ceiling, we decided to use it as-is.  We respliced all of the wiring in the box, however.  Notice the various color rings surrounding the  box.

This is the new light fixture with its three 60-Watt equivalent CFL bulbs.



















The future looks so much brighter now.
          bIsh