Monday, April 03, 2006

No love for a tub

So i had the exciting job of installing a tub this weekend. To cut to the short let me just say I'm a programmer not a plumber and I guess there is good reason. Now there are a lot similarities between the two jobs, programmers as well as plumbers have to deal with a lot of shit.

Anyway the weekend actually started Thursday night when I pulled the tub out of the enclossure we built for it. I started by installing the drain and the overflow, then started installing the faucet and roman filler, this is where things started going down hill. The design of the tub has a 4 inch lip going all the way around it, and when you go to put the plumbing parts in there is a shelf that was put in at the factory that needed to be removed. Normally this wouldn't be a problem but this tub has the whirlpool jets already in it and the pipes for that make using a power tool impossible, not to mention there was no room for a hand saw as well. I cannot figure for the life of me why they would put this in there knowing that it simply has to be removed in order to install the faucets. So after 3 hours and a whole lot of swearing I finally got the facuet installed and ready to go. We went to install the tub back in it's enclosure for the final time, and with the drain and overflow on it, it no longer fit in the hole. So we had to remove the drain and over flow then set the tub in place. When I went to install the drain from underneath the hole wasn't large enough to install it from underneath so that was it that's the night.

Friday i started right after work, I cut the hole larger and installed the drain, I then cut and run the drain pipe and tied it into the existing drain, piece of cake. Did a drain test and leak test, all works great. Moved on to the cold water tap, I tied into the basement sink and then ran the ipex pipe and attached it to the tub. Turned on house water again, did a leak test, no leaks ok try the tap, tried the tap and started getting soaked. Somethings wrong but I can't find out what, so the answer was cut a hole in the (newly finished) wall of my bedroom to see if I can get at it without removing the tub. Nope can't see where it is leaking except that I can feel it's coming out of the main faucet.

Saturday, No choice, disconnect drain and plumbing and pull the tub. When we pulled the tub 3 tiles let go and popped off, the tiles were held together with a mesh and they had too much glue on them so the cement couldn't get to the tile just to the mesh. So looking at the leak I noticed everything was hooked up right with teflon, and tight but couldn't see an obvious place for the leak so I had to jimmy a hook to the water line while the tub was out so I could see the leak. It turns out one of the feeder lines to the main faucet was a quarter turn loose, re-tighten and leak fixed. So tile needed to re-set in place, then I took the dogs for a walk, come back to put some grout in place, to find the tiles on the floor, Lucy found it rather entertaining to pop the tiles off again before they set. So clean out the cement and mix up a new batch of cement and re-set them. This time block every hole into the bathroom. 2 hours later slap some grout in and clean up and re-install tub. Hook up drain and plumbing, then do a leak test, shit the drain started leaking. Gotta pull the drain and change washers, when I went to remove the drain the cross pieces at the bottom of the drain shattered and now I couldn't remove the drain. Remember how I said I tied it into the basement sink? Well that line has a shutoff value that has to be original to the house, so when I closed it to do the work it developed a tremendous leak, so I had to cut it out and put in a new valve. Once the new valve was in place the cold water tap started leaking again. I removed the tap and realised the new valve increased the pressure which burst the gasket in the tap, so I had to remove that and replace it. I'm calling it a night.

Sunday, spend the morning looking a for a tool called a "Drain Key" that is used for removing drains that don't have the cross pieces. Not one big box store carries it, I cannot be the first person to run into this. So defeated I went home to figure out a way of removing the drain without damaging the tub. I finally got it by widdling a piece of wood down to the size of the drain then stuffed it in the opening then screwed some screws into the wood which caused it to crack and expand as well as digging into the other side of the drain then used channel locks to twist the wood. Ok back on track, I put the new drain in, did another leak test on everything, all was perfect, no leaks anywhere, so let's fill it up for the first time. Success! finally, ok it's full let's try the whirlpool, ready, set, nothing. WTF, check everything again, nothing completely dead, check everything again that is accessible from the access panel, which is everything but the switch, nothing works. This means I probably have disconnect everything and pull the tub and check the connections on the switch and put in a service call. DOG FUCK THAT IS A HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?