Current mood:	geeky
Entry tags:	plumbing, water heater, water softener

Chris the Plumber...
Spring has sprung, and naturally a young mans mind turns to ... plumbing? Yes, I decided to play the plumber for the weekend. I'm not exactly "Joe the Plumber", but I actually quite enjoyed it, so i thought I would recount the tales...


A few months ago, I noticed that our water bills were going up - despite the fact that winter had arrived, and the sprinklers had been shut off for ages. Our water softener has (or rather, had) a feature called the "Water Mizer" - a little red light that lights up when there is water running. I checked that to see if anything was running - and found that the water softener itself was leaking! Luckily it was not actually leaking onto the ground, but the overflow was running out of the backwash pipe and into the drain. It did pretty good service for 11 years, so I figured we did OK. I disconnected it from the system - which should have been an easy job, but was actually quite tricky - a previous owner of the house had done some DIY plumbing in the garage (including the water softener hookup) - and they were not all that good at it. In fact, instead of water pipe, they used thin-wall electrical conduit! This was probably 25 years ago, so the water softener hookup was fragile to say the least. Not only that, but there had at one time been a sink installed in the garage, and there was now a rats-nest of pipes and drains. Anyway, I managed to disconnect the water softener without breaking anything, and left it at that, planning to come back and do the job properly at some point.

Now a week or so ago, i was taking a look at where I would install the new softener - and noticed that the ground was damp. Yep, things always seem to happen at once - turns out that the water heater had sprung a leak. It did us pretty good service too, considering its warranty expired in 1990 (making it at least 25 years old). It was a slow leak, but it had soaked the "pedestal" (water heaters in CA have to be raised off the floor when installed in a garage, to avoid petrol vapours), which was made of wood and sheetrock - when sheetrock gets wet, it basically starts to fall apart. So, in the spirit of "doing the job right", I pulled out the old heater, and pulled apart the pedestal. Uggg, it turns out that under the pedestal was a lovely place for a rats nest, that had then been soaked by the leaking water - not pleasant. I spent several hours breaking things down and cleaning up, ready for the "new install".

I did a lot of research on new water heaters - I like to upgrade to the latest technology where possible. But in this case, the alternative to a classic old water heater is a "tankless water heater" - but the more I read about them, the less I liked them. They may be slightly more economical (as they have no storage costs), but require a much higher gas draw (10x that of a standard water heater), which means that the old gas line would probably not be big enough, and the venting would also have to be upgraded. There is also a question of how much they can supply, and even the biggest will struggle if you want to shower while the washing machine is running. The solution is to install two or more in parallel, but that was all starting to get way too complicated - so it was off to home depot for a plain-old storage water heater.

In looks, the new heater is more or less *exactly* the same as the one it was replacing - same height, same width, same inlets, outlets and vents - not much has changed there in 25 years. I did choose a good one, a GE with a 12-year warranty, and an energy star rating wualifying me for a $30 rebate from PG&E (thats the gas and electric company), and, believe it or not, a tax-credit for next year! Well, I guess that should make me feel green, right?

I rebuilt the pedestal, with cement board this time (water proof), and added a "drip pan" under the water heater to catch any eventual leaks, and direct them to a drain. I even painted the pedestal and wall "sunburst yellow", which makes this little corner look quite cheery - although of course now the rest of the garage needs doing as well... the trickiest part was getting the new water heater into place - these things weigh in at around 150 pounds, and the pedestal is 20 inches high - plus a 3-inch lip on the drain pan. But I love a challenge like that, so with three long boards resting on some bricks in the pan, I slowly "walked" the water heater into place. The last little step of removing the bricks required a little brute force (and help from Jenny), but it all went prett smoothly.

Hookup was simply a matter of reconnecting the water lines, gas line, and vent. The tricky part was the "overflow" pipe - water heaters are fitted with a pressure release valve (which should be tested once a year - have you tested your pressure relief valve today?), which needs to be piped through hot water pipe (i.e. no PVC), and to a drain (or to the outside, as this one was). The previous installation was "dodgy" to say the least, built out of bits of galvanised pipe, and not at all following "code". Well, I hooked it up as is for the short term, knowing that I was coming back to attack the rest of the plumbing shortly.

So, next was the water softener. As I said, the plumbing for that was extremely dodgy, so finally I just pulled out the lot, including the afore mentioned "rats nest" of pipes and drains. Amazing, it opened up a huge space in the garage! The new water softener (also a GE, as it happens) has connections for 1" pipe. The water pipe coming up from the ground is also one inch, as is the pipe leading into the house for service. So, I carefully made all my plans for the new plumming route, and went and bought all of the 1" parts and pipes I would need. When I went to cut off the water mains though, I discovered that the actual pipe leading off the water meter is only a 3/4"! Ah well, 1" pipe won't hurt, but I definately could have got away with 3/4".

One thing I didn't like is that the new water softener is designed for a "fixed" connection - the old one had flexible pipes for the hookup, which makes things easier. With a rigid connection, you have to make your measurements carefully so that the connection is at just the right height and spacing - and from experience, that can sometimes prove tricky. But, luck was on my side, and after I finished all of the hookup, I was spot on in the right place. I plumbed everything in, waited the 2 hours for the pipes to cure, and with fingers crossed - turned on the mains. No leaks, hurrah! So, no we have nice soft water again (the water at our house is very hard, as it is all well water).

Next step on the plumbing front is installing a new water filter. Water softeners don't add all that much sodium, but we do drink a lot of water, and that means our sodium intake was probably 10-20% higher because of the softener. That doesn't worry me too much, we don't eat much processed food, and never add salt when cooking, so our sodium intake is still probably way less than the average person's. Still, water is pretty important stuff, so I am considering fitting a reverse osmosis filter for drinking water. Any one have one?