Month: March 2006

Plumbing project finally completed

lpaulriddle

Well, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see this day, but the basement plumbing project is finally finished. It went smoothly and pretty much according to plan. No more leaky fitting in the basement, and I now have a working frost free sillcock outside by the pool equipment. I started at 8:30am on Friday, and finished up at around 1:30pm, with lunch and a couple of breaks in between. Lessons learned along the way:

  1. I had originally suspected that our house shutoff didn’t fully shut the water off, but it looks like it does after all. It just takes a long time to drain the house plumbing. When I first cut the pipes apart, I had a persistent drizzle coming out of the cut pipe. At the time, I had opened every faucet in the house except for the bar sink. When I opened the bar sink faucet, the drizzle stopped and I was able to sweat the pipe without using any bread.
  2. I tried to solder one of the joints while there was still some standing water in the pipe near the joint. It took a loooong time before the pipe got hot enough to melt the solder. In the process, the heat from the torch boiled the water off. Despite my worries, I still ended up with a leak-free joint. Next time though, I’ll make sure the joint is a dry as possible before soldering. Barring that, make sure there’s an opening somewhere for the steam to escape.
  3. Don’t hold the torch directly below the joint, or solder will drip into it and foul up the torch tip. Fortunately, they’re cheap..

This was the biggest project I’ve ever done involving copper sweating. I’ve found that as long as the joints are fully cleaned and fluxed, it’s pretty hard not to end up with a leak-free joint.

Really glad to finish that one up!

Draft Schedule of Classes

lpaulriddle

Just a quick note on the UMBC web schedule of classes thing…

There’s a “draft” version of the schedule of classes, that the registrar occasionally likes to populate. The URL of this version is http://www.umbc.edu/aboutumbc/newschedule. Access to this page is controlled by a simple .htaccess file. There’s a single username and password that the registrar disseminates to all interested parties.

All of the updates to this schedule happen behind the scenes. There’s a parallel job on the HP3000 that handles this version of the schedule. The web version is built from the same verter.pl script that handles the regular version. The only real maintenance involved with this is occasionally changing the password at the request of the registrar. The password file is located at

/afs/umbc.edu/admin/www/umbc/htdocs/aboutumbc/newschedule/.htaccess

The registrar will typically request that the password be changed right before they start mucking with the draft schedule. They asked me to do it today for the fall 2006 schedule.

Once they’re done with the draft schedule, they may request that access to it be disabled. I do this (again) by changing the password.

You may ask, why not use a webauth-enabled .htaccess file? Well, that would be more maintenance, because then we’d have to maintain a list of users who have access to the page. They way it is now, all I ever have to do with the thing is change one password. It works.

Plumbing!

lpaulriddle

Friday’s the big day.

Friday is the day I’ve set aside to finish the never-ending basement plumbing project(tm). My goal is to finish this before the baby comes, and before the yard/pool work starts. The trick is picking the day to do it. Ideally I need a day when I can have the house to myself for several hours starting at around 8-8:30am. The job really shouldn’t take too long, but with plumbing projects, you always have to allow for unexpected complications. Anyhow, most Fridays fit the bill, so I just had to pick a Friday, take off work, and go for it.

With these types of projects, it’s always good to have a plan, so here’s the plan.

Before Friday:

  1. Order and receive remaining supplies necessary to complete project (expecting these today).
  2. Clear space in boiler room for access to pipes.
  3. Make sure we’ve got some bread on hand that I can use when sweating pipes.
  4. Disassemble a 3/4″ stop & waste valve for sweating.
  5. Check side-by-side play in branches to make sure I won’t have any problems getting couplings on them.

On Friday: For phase 1, disassemble the old pipes and sweat a new stop & waste valve onto the 3/4″ supply line. This will give me a positive shutoff for the branch (the main shutoff is a gate valve which doesn’t seem to shut the water off 100%)

  1. Take shower and fill up drinking water pitcher, water bottles etc.
  2. Shut water off. Open faucets (including outside sillcock) to drain plumbing.
  3. Disassemble the old branch starting with the compression fittings and working back to the 3/4″ supply in the boiler room. Have buckets and rags handy to catch drips and plug pipes.
  4. Put new 3/4″ supply line in place. Clean and flux new supply line and disassembled valve.
  5. Stuff bread in existing supply line. Clean and flux. Put joint together and sweat.
  6. Reassemble stop & waste valve. Make sure valve is shut OFF. Turn water on at main. Check for leaks.
  7. Turn valve on to eject bread (can I do this without a helper? Not sure..)

For phase 2… hook up the rest of the branch, with the main turned on and the branch shut off via the new valve.

  1. Trim, deburr and dry-fit the new branch together.
  2. Open all faucets on the branch to allow steam to escape.
  3. Clean, flux and fit the “tee” fitting, and two of the three branches. Wrap wet rags around existing soldered joints. Sweat together and allow to cool.
  4. Clean, flux and sweat the remaining branch. Allow to cool.
  6. Remove aerators from all fixtures on branch. Shut all faucets off.
  7. Turn branch on and check for leaks.
  8. Turn each faucet on in succession and run till water comes out clean.

That’s about it. Wish me luck!