New Life in the Woods

Ok, it’s officially a saga now.

I got the last of the siding and plywood off this morning and was ready to begin taking out the old copper pipe when I ran into a problem. I started at the front of the house, where I had previously patched that leak near the toilet. The thing is, I want all the old copper pipe gone because I just have no confidence in it anymore, but I had left a little bit of the copper pipe right behind the toilet.

Remember this picture from that interim repair I reported on the 21st? I had cut out the leaky section and just bridged the gap with plastic PEX, with a brass fitting on each end connecting to the remaining copper pipe. Now I wanted that pipe gone. I spent about an hour trying to disconnect the water cutoff valve inside behind the toilet. It was tight quarters and I could only move the wrench a little at a time. I finally figured out that the fitting was turning, but it was just turning a section of pipe with it, not unscrewing. I went back outside, cut the pipe as close to the wall as I could and just pulled the damned thing out on the inside.

Once I had the valve away from the wall, I was able to take it apart and then I realized I didn’t have the right connector to mate that valve with the brass fittings used with the PEX. So, I drove to town and went to the plumbing store and spent about a half hour there trying to figure out some way to mate the two. Turns out the valve had a different type of thread, so in the end I bought a new valve with the right thread to attach to the brass PEX fitting. Problem solved, but the whole trip took about an hour and a half.

I got back, ate lunch, and went to install the new cut-off valve behind the toilet and ran into another problem. These brass PEX fittings are really neat — normally you just push them onto the end of the pipe and little “teeth” inside grip the pipe so you can’t pull it off (and the water pressure can’t push it off either). Sounds easy right? Well, it was easy to attach a brass fitting with threads on one side to the new valve and a small piece of PEX to the socket on the other side — I just pushed it in. Voila! I put the valve in place with the short piece of PEX extending through the wall to the outside and reattached it to the small, flexible pipe leading to the toilet. Then I went outside and tried to grip the PEX pipe while I pushed on the right-angle brass fitting that would turn the pipe to run through the wall. Just one problem, the plastic pipe is slippery and it takes a fair amount of force to push the fittings on all the way… and there was nothing holding the valve solidly in place on the inside of the house. These things don’t mount to the wall or floor or anything, they just hang off the end of the pipe, so there was nothing to push against. Finally, after putting a log against the valve, and then (when that failed) bracing a few things against that log so it held the valve tightly against the wall, I was able to push the right-angle fitting onto the PEX pipe on the outside.

All of that took quite a while, of course, but now I was ready to remove the short section I had previously repaired, and all the copper pipe beyond that all the way back to the utility closet. Remember I said that once you insert PEX pipe into one of these brass fittings you can’t pull it out again? Well, you can if you have a special tool to do it. It’s a tiny blue piece of plastic, a little smaller than a quarter and about as thick as 3 quarters stacked, that looks like a “C” and costs about a dollar. It snaps around the pipe and you pull it up against the fitting, which pushes a sleeve in the fitting inward which releases the teeth gripping the pipe and pulls the fitting away from the pipe in the same motion. I couldn’t find it. I have been putting this little tool in the same place for weeks so I would always know where it was (cause it is darn easy to lose, which I did once before). Not there. Not in my coat pockets, nor in any of my pants pockets. Not on the floor, or in the likely boxes, or on the kitchen table, or in the bathroom where I last used it… gone.

Finally I realized I still had some 3/4 inch PEX pipe that might fit around the 1/2″ pipe tightly and smoothly enough to serve the same purpose. I cut a small section of pipe and then cut a break in it so it had a “C” profile when viewed on end. I snapped this around the half-inch PEX pipe and pulled it against the fitting. No luck. I pulled it off and realized that one end was cut at a slight angle, which would apply unequal pressure to the sleeve on the fitting, so I turned it around to use the other end, snapped it back on and tried again. It worked! I was back in business!

Of course, another hour or so had passed by now…. I went back to getting that copper pipe out of the wall. I hooked up my jig saw to the extension cord and started cutting pipe behind the shower. But it was really hard, not at all what I had expected. Then I realized that I hadn’t yet put one of the metal-cutting blades on it. I was cutting metal with a blade designed to cut wood. Haha.

So, I switched the blades, but right away I saw another problem. The new metal cutting blades were much shorter — about an inch shorter, and it might not reach the pipes, which run more or less through the middle of the studs, about 2 inches from the back side of the wall. In most places, like where I am just cutting the pipes between the studs, that’s no problem — they are out in the open and I can fit the entire jig saw right up against them, but behind the shower, at least one of the pipes ran right alongside a vertical stud and it was pretty tight up against the back of the shower too. I got out a small hacksaw and did that one manually, but I wasn’t able to get at the back edge of it. I got my larger hacksaw and took the blade off so that the arm of the hacksaw wouldn’t get in the way. This blade was thicker however and it kept getting stuck in the first cut. Plus, I couldn’t grip it very well because the teeth of the blade were just as likely to slip against my hand and cut into the skin of my palm. Finally I put the long wood cutting blade back on the jig saw and just kept at it until I was through!

Now I devoted my attention to a nasty little corner at the side of the bathroom where it shares a wall with the kitchen. Remember that little triangle of siding where the bathroom is? In this corner the outside wall extends about 12 to 14 inches outwards and then runs straight all the way back along the kitchen to the back of the house. But in that lower area of the triangle, the pipes have to route around two corners, requiring 4 right-angle connectors on each pipe (moving towards the outside a bit, then down, then towards the outside a bit more, then turning to run along the outside of the kitchen wall). It was a nasty little mess and all of it in a very tight space. I managed to cut the pipes on both side of the final corner, but I wasn’t able to pull the two sections (each with a right angle bend in it) out of that corner. I worked on that for over an hour. I think I will have to manually cut the pipes as close to the corner as possible before I can get them out. The jig saw just can’t get close enough in that tight space. Plus there is an electrical wire running along with these pipes through the same space, so I have to be really careful.

But, as so often seems to happen, night was falling as I was sorting this out so I packed up all my tools, gathered all the PEX and cut copper pipes, etc., and called it a day. I’ll get it tomorrow! The good news is that the clear weather is supposed to continue for the next several days, with some cloudiness over the weekend, but no rain expected. I should be able to finish up and even have an extra day or two to check for leaks before I put all the siding back on the house. That could easily take me a couple days too, so, with the weather at least, I have really lucked out. I’ll continue the harrowing tale tomorrow. I really should be getting the new PEX installed then. Wish me luck… I need it!