odds n ends as we get closer to heat

We really are getting down to the last little bit of work for the heat.. just finishing up running gas line to all reaches of the house.

Here's Dan with his favorite harbor fright toy - the right angle drill - drilling holes in the studs to run the gas out to backyard. That's right, natural gas bbq here we come! That bbq has been our oven for the last couple years, so I'll be very happy to not need to get propane.. well, we'll still need it for our stove, but one thing at a time..

Ok, two things at a time :D
There were a couple repairs to make to the fire pit, like plumbing it into the gas line! More on this later..

This is where the laundry room will be, and then the line splits off to the backyard on the left.
No leaks here!

Pressurizing the system indicated that it was still leaking from somewhere though..

.. and lo and behold, the last place I would've thought to look, the line PG&E installed between the gas meter and the emergency shutoff valve! Look at that leak!!

We disassembled that whole section and taped and gooped it up, and the pressure holds! Unfortunately, there's still a slow leak somewhere at the manifold, so there's a bit more sleuthing to do before we can have the system inspected

A couple small leaks have been eliminated, but it still loses about a quarter pound of pressure an hour.. every connection has been checked and rechecked, and Dan even found and fixed a leak in one of the cast valves! Still a slow leak though..

There's a bit of wiring to do too. The control panel needs to be connected to the sensors and the boiler..

The boiler seems so small, it's extra crazy how much open space there is inside. Lots of coils up inside those cylinders though, which explains why it could look this empty and still be so heavy!

Couple circuits had to be run too. This one is for the tankless hot water heater.

Here's the other end of that circuit, approaching the heater.

A very exciting prospect of the brand-spanking new subpanels in the house is that as a line gets run, we can note it. Which means that we have an excellent chance of having all the circuit breakers accurately marked with the actual location the circuit is run!! Isn't that exciting?! (that sounds sort of sarcastic, which is completely unintended.. it's really an exciting prospect!)

The fun with gas never ends

Each Saturday morning we wake from our dreams of the cavalry riding in and doing a large amount of work for a reasonable price and head downstairs, turn off the gas, and get back to the pipes..

I've been lagging on posting pictures and details because it all looks a bit monotonous: a run of pipe, a piece of pipe being threaded, pipe wrenches tightening the new piece in, cutting the next obstacle out of the way. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The fun and exciting part is how every 5 feet there's an old unused gas line, or something unimportant like the main water line coming into the house, that's completely in the way of the gas run and has to be moved before we can continue.

Here's a selection of pix of threading gas lines

Here's a little slice of one section of the room.. It's a bit busy, but a decent representation of how much is involved in running not all that much pipe.

This is getting close to the end of the run to the new tankless water heater.

It may seem like hooking up a new water heater is a distraction from the work to get the heat up and running, but a) we need to complete the entire gas run for this floor so we can pressurize/test it and have it inspected, and b) our current water heater I bought on craigslist goes out at random with increasing regularity. Like last night right before shower time.

Moving on to to some of the cutting of unfortunately placed pipes.. This is a hot water line running to the lone bathroom in the house

We need to replumb the water lines in the house and Dan has been trying to get the permits approved to use Pex tubing instead of copper (it's better in 100 different ways.. Dan should do a post on that at some point.), but has been turned down several times. Pex is legal and approved, but until August is at the discretion of the local building official.

This is what that pipe looks like on the inside. It was so gross I absolutely couldn't convince the camera to focus on it!

This is one good reason for redoing the water lines, which we would do right now if we could just get that permit..

This is one of the more interesting action shots of cutting random pipes out of the way. My dear husband takes the most flattering pix of me working

Here we had not only pipes, but also walls in the way of the gas runs.

There were notches already in the joists, but they were for a smaller diameter pipe that was apparently bent here and there because they were only sort of aligned.

I widened the notches a bit and made them just a smidge taller - they can't be any more than 1.5" into the joist, which is just barely more than what they need to be for the 1" gas line to fit, so I had to be pretty careful not to cut outside the lines.

The pipe made it all the way through the field of joists only to knock right up against the top plate of a wall, so I took a notch out of that too..

..only to get the pipe to the other side of the wall where it knocked up against a water pipe!

Take that little story and repeat it over and over, and that's what the last month or so has been like

This is the far side of that water pipe after it was removed.. it's extra special because from this point on it's a single pipe that goes all the way to the kitchen sink. With no joints, our two options were taking the whole thing down and replacing it, or threading a cut end in place to attach a fitting and connect to a temporary line. Since our goal here is to get the gas done in order to have heat sometime before midsummer, we went the thread-in-place route

And it worked great! Here Dan has it all threaded and hooked up to a shutoff valve, which was then hooked up to the previously mentioned on-its-last-legs soon-to-be-retired water heater.

We've been agonizingly close to done with the pipes for awhile, but now we're actually close enough to start thinking about pressurizing the lines and testing! So I made a little test fixture that has a pressure gauge with a quick-connect to hook up to our air compressor, on one half of the same size union that connects the main gas line into the house up to the gas meter.

<-- action shot of me disconnecting the gas meter

And here's the little gauge sitting at 10 psi

briefly

until it went to 9

then 8..

I should've taken a picture of the giant air bubble that appeared the second we got soapy water on the fitting at the end of the main run right where it splits in 3 directions.. but it was a little too depressing. Basically, one of the pipes I threaded, conveniently located in the dead center of everything so that a good half the piping needs to be disconnected in order to repair it, was leaking like crazy.

This being the end of the day Sunday, we disconnected everything past that point, and attached the temporary flexible line to the current water heater to that point and called it a week.

fun with gas.. pipe that is

In the pile of trash remaining after Leroy's grandkids took everything they thought had value, were some tools from his days as a plumber. This box held the dies sitting next to it, which are used to cut threads into pipe. The two big pole things are ratchets the dies would go into, if they were from the same set.. Unfortunately, they weren't, and a ratchet for the great Ridgid set he had now costs several hundred dollars. Which might've been worth it, because it is really good set, except there was no 3/4"" die, which is one of the sizes we need.

So, we took a little field trip to Harbor Freight, which is sort of like a trip to the toy store, and picked up a full set for less than the cost of a Ridgid ratchet. We have no illusions that this will last nearly as long, or be of nearly as high quality as the Ridgid set, but we don't have all that much pipe to run so it fits our needs pretty well.

One thing that was all together was this tri-stand for holding pipe while you thread it - also Ridgid, and also remarkably expensive to buy!

You tighten the pipe in the vise, and the wide leg base makes it very stable so you can crank down on the pipe without it moving.

Plus, it's got a quick release, which makes it easy to get the pipe out after you've threaded a fitting onto the end of it, as we discovered later.

In theory, it's all very straightforward.. you slide the ratchet on a clean, square-cut, deburred piece of pipe and crank it clockwise to start cutting threads.

This ratchett has a reverse, which you're supposed to use every full turn or so to back out the shavings so they don't muck up the threads

And no holding back on the cutting oil.. lubrication keeps it all sliding smoothly

And voila! a pipe exactly as long as you need!

Everything went so well on the test pipes, we were ready to go on the 9' length of 1.5" pipe. One of the last things we need to do for the heat is to run the gas to the boiler, so that's what we're working on

Here's an action shot of Dan working the ratchet.

This is what it looks like mid-threading. We stopped regularly to get out all the shavings and spray lubricant in there, but the threads still wound up a little chewed up

From here it looks like a perfect job!

And the fitting went on easily, so it was time to put it inline.

We used teflon tape on the male pipe end and liquid plumbers tape on the female fitting, which is what all the pros recommended. It helps protect the pipe, since the galvanization is gone where we cut threads, and of course helps get a good seal.

The first one fit perfectly!

The next one I cut, and it wasn't quite as pretty.. and the fitting didn't go on as easily.. but it did go on and it doesn't leak.

But that's not really the point of this glamour shot.. I'm still barely showing, but I don't have any maternity work clothes, so we wind up with very attractive views like this.

We didn't get the whole run done, so it's capped off and next weekend we're back on pipe duty.

"good thing we're a monopoly"

That's what the guy from PG&E said to me when he showed up this morning!! On their THIRD day in a row of work on this one day job..

This meter actually showed up last night. Just barely.

After recalling everyone he'd called the night before Dan finally got hold of a supervisor who put us back on the schedule BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T PLANNING ON COMING BACK
/sigh

Then he got a call that they were going to be there sometime after 4:30, so he rushed home from work to wait and wait and wait. At about 7:30 a guy showed up, but he didn't have a meter! He said he needed to run and get supplies and that he'd be back.

By about 8:30 we were pretty sure we were in for another night without hot water, but sure enough, he came back with the meter shortly after that. After he installed the meter he came through the house and checked all the gas appliances in the house. And by all I mean he lit the hot water heater and checked the dryer.. he was a little thrown by the propane camp stove sitting on top of the dryer, but everything checked out and we took hot showers!

But not everything was done. The line from the street to the meter was still the smaller, original size, thus defeating the entire purpose of having touched it at all.

This morning, the speaker of that fabulous quote showed up to swap out the line between the valve just past the sidewalk We weren't about to rip up the newly poured sidewalk again, plus, the valve was where the valve was.. they have no way to shut the gas off between the street and that valve so all of this was always about the run of pipe between the valve and the meter.

When I left for work he was grumbling about how he was going to weld in that trench, and when I came home the trench was filled back in again! just to the level of the pipe, of course.

I'd give them the benefit of the doubt to say it was filled in for safety.. since the trench was about 8" deeper than the level of the pipe, if someone fell into the pit and landed on the pipe there'd be no support for it floating in air, and it's likely it could snap. Which would be bad.
Had we not already dug up the incorrect work that had been covered up, I would be much more inclined to think that safety was the reason. As it was, it just meant we had to dig up the dirt AGAIN.

Here it is. Here's what all the fuss was about. On the right you can see the bigger yellow pipe, but for some reason there's a length of smaller pipe between that and the valve. After another hour on the phone with supervisors it was determined that everything was the correct size and the job was officially done (this was determined by them telling us this..), so I guess that's that.

We can finally fill the trench back in for good and I can start putting down a path so it's not a muddy mess every time it rains.

got gas?

We don't!

The plumber came and did everything we needed him to do before PG&E's scheduled appointment time of 8:30 am

He shut the gas off, disconnected the old meter to reroute the main gas line into the house to the other side of this staircase..

.. and he installed an emergency shutoff valve which automatically shuts the gas off in an earthquake.

It's not the most attractive house accessory I've ever seen, but it's MUCH better than losing our house to a fire after an earthquake

And here's PG&E's part of the work. You can see the new bigger gas line going through the concrete curb of the driveway and attaching up to the new meter feeding into the house.

Wait.. no.. my mistake.. THERE'S NO METER THERE!!

So Dan started calling supervisors and helplines and emergency helplines (on hold for 40 minutes on an emergency helpline doesn't give me much of a feeling of safety)

You can also see that the gas line does NOT go through the concrete curb and, after we dug back up the dirt they so thoughtfully piled back into the pit, just barely covering the work they did, we realized it was actually not a bigger pipe at all. It was way after dark by this time, so the pictures don't really show anything..

Make way for PG&E

PG&E finally got us on the schedule to come and increase the gas service to the house. Because the gas main in the street is at low pressure, the only way to increase the pressure to the house is to increase the size of the line coming. If they'd gotten back to us 9 months ago our driveway could've been a foot and a half wider, but as it was we really didn't want to go with the suggestion to have an "accidental" gas leak to get them out before the foundation and slab were poured.

They told us the new meter wouldn't fit in the cabinet the existing one was in and we couldn't mount it outside that wall because we have stairs there now to get down to the newly-dug out garage. So, we had to find a new spot for the meter, and decided on the other side of the front stairs, next to the driveway.

The plan is to run the gas line straight (for a change) from the street, through the curb at the side of the driveway (seen in the picture at left), then up to a new meter.

So we needed to dig a trench from the gas main on the street, pull up the bricks along the edge of the driveway, and have a licensed plumber move the point of entry for the gas line into the house over to the new location.

<-- Here's me getting the dirt out from under the existing gas line. Doesn't it look fun?! Apparently Tom Sawyer's tactics don't work anymore because I tried to get 2 kids and a dog to help dig and none of them took me up on it!

And even if it wasn't almost October, we had to do something with all that misplaced dirt, right?!

The neighbors LOVE the memorial Dan made. (you probably need to click on the pic to get a version big enough to read)

the wait is finally over: first problem

What You Don't Want To See When Preparing To Pour A Driveway

A couple of things came up yesterday as the driveway was being dug down... because we lowered the level of the garage, the driveway has to slope down about 2 feet from the street-this extra depth uncovered a few surprises...

<-- Here you can see both the problems. At the bottom left is the main sewer lateral cutting diagonally through the driveway. The trenches are at the final depth, and the pipe was barely below the surface. The yellow hose on the right is the main gas line into the house, also very close to the surface and nowhere near where anyone thought it was: right in the middle of a footing.

In this picture you can see why we were surprised to find the gas line in the middle of the driveway ->>

The red circle at the upper left is the line into the gas meter.

The blue circle is apparently the original gas line, right where we expected to find it, but capped off and not connected to anything.

Yellow on the right is the active gas line, about a foot into the driveway.

George the GC (in the Raiders jacket-go Raiders!!!) came over and we spent some time measuring and talking about the problems.


The sewer line will definitely need to be moved, but that was less of a surprise. It'll run along the side of driveway under the water main (Apparently the sewer line can be as close as a foot away from the water line), but then it needs to make about a 60 degree bend (this seems like a likely clog point) to meet up with the city line.

Also, because of the new lower floor level and the fall requirement the fixtures in the bathroom will be higher than the floor.. we're just trying to determine how high.

Here's Hector (the head of the crew) measuring the height of the stack and where it connects to the city line, which is the absolute lowest it could be connected.

The gas line is a different issue.. from what everyone tells us it's very unlikely we'll be able to move it. All we need is a few inches to get it out of the driveway, but that would likely add weeks and a few thousand dollars to the project.

We are going to have to alter the retaining wall on the side of the driveway to skirt the gas line. This is going to squeeze the width of the driveway somewhat. To determine what the absolute minimum the driveway width can be, we pulled up my bike next to the car and got to measuring ourselves.. all we need is to be able to have a car parked in the driveway with enough room left over to get a motorcycle into and out of the garage. Dan's bike is a little wider than mine, but we think if the narrowest part of the driveway is 10' (and the car is parked as far to one side as we can manage) we should be ok.

I've got piles of pictures of the footing forms and framing thus far, I'll get that up tomorrow.