Plumbing and electrical

 So here we are again, 2023 is upon us and I've forgotten to update the blog for 6 months...

It feels like just yesterday since I updated but clearly not.

This week I'll be working on few posts to bring us back up to date. For today lets dial back to July.

You might remember our house in Maine:

In 2021 we repainted the house and rebuilt the enclosed porch. The idea is to stop the house from disintegrating before starting any upgrades. In 2022 I decided to continue down the same path when I discovered that the water pipe to the toilet was leaking.

Thus embarked a weekend long odyssey of pluming. Here we've got the pump and pressure tank. Those have been left alone but notice the blue pipe heading up, that's 3/4" PEX. I did have to sweat in a copper to PEX adapter which was surprisingly easy but from there on almost all of the the plumbing is plastic.

I've been a plumbing traditionalist in the past, not wanting to use "those new fangled things" but honestly PEX is the way to go. I installed the entire cold water system in one day and could have done it in less with better planning. With copper I'd have been at it for several days.

My original plan only involved replacing the cold water system, as shown here. Everything in blue is new PEX, the hot water side is still copper. I did that because I still haven't installed the hot water heater, so there really wasn't any point in doing the hot water side. Then I decided I'd link the hot water side to the cold water side. This would result in both faucets running cold water but it would at least let the hot water faucet do something. In the picture you can just spot a little red pipe from the cold to the hot.

This turned out to be a terrible idea, all the hot water pipes (unused for many years) leaked. So I took another day and replaced those as well.

This is 3/4" PEX running along the outside wall of the house. Since all the fixtures in the house are in line with each other what I should have done was run one 3/4" trunk line and then spur off with 1/2" lines to each fixture. I'd have used less pipe and it'd be a better looking install. Probably in 2023 I'll redo all of it, I'm planning to relocate the kitchen sink anyway so I'll do both at the same time.

This is the new bathroom vanity. It replaced a very ugly, early '80s unit that was installed with galvanized pipe that had very nearly corroded away...

Anyway, with the PEX installed we were no longer one plumbing leak away from a flooded basement. Even with my ugly install things are way better than they were. So I turned my efforts to electrical.

On the electrics side the first thing I did was wire in basement lights. There were a few lights down there but not enough and not done in a safe way. Now we have 4 foot LED lights wired to a common switch and a good, grounded, outlet. This makes working in the basement much more pleasant and safer.

The next step was to address the well pump wiring. I've been told the pump itself is probably from the 1920s.

This is the old setup, we're looking directly above the pump, the pump you can see in the picture is the old "soft water" pump that was used to move rain water from a cistern. That system has been disconnected from the plumbing for years but the pump was still connected to the electrics via the left side switch at the top of the picture. The right side switch that you can barely see in the picture powers the well pump. What you can't see is the copper pipe that used to run between them. This was not what you'd call a safe install. Also notice the top of the ladder in the left of the picture. Those switches are eight feet off the ground, very difficult to access.

This is after, I've added the piece of plywood to protect the switch in case the pump blows up, I've located it lower so it's much more convenient and I've used 12ga ROMEX wire directly from a 20a circuit breaker.  

I still need to repair/replace the pressure switch on the pump. It'll work if you tap it but it gets stuck between uses and we run out of water pressure until the switch gets tapped again. I think this is just because it doesn't get used enough. I have another pump with pressure switch I could put in it's place which would undoubtably be quieter than this one but part of me thinks that this thing has been working for 100 years I should probably keep it.

So what's on tap for 2023? This *should* be the year for upgrades. We spent some time in November working on the kitchen and have the old plaster and lathe mostly removed. I need to shore up ceiling a little and remove a little stub of wall and then wire in electrics. I want to be able to run the microwave and toaster oven at the same time so I'll be running at least three circuits, plus one for an electric stove. Eventually I think we'll go to a propane stove but short term a used electric stove is cheap.

Once the wiring is done I want to replace the two kitchen windows. The one facing east is too small, it'll be over the sink so I want something fairly large. The other one is a reasonable size but I want them to match...

After windows I'll get the kitchen spray foamed. Foam insulation offers the highest R-value for thickness and seals the room against drafts. There is a chance I'll get the bathroom done at the same time, that's contingent on removing the tub, removing one window and replacing the other. That window replacement is kind of a big deal because we'll be going with a much smaller unit that is up higher in the wall. We'll see...