Well here it is New Year’s Eve again. Once again, I took a nice, (2 week) long holiday break from work. And once again, I started out hoping to get tons done around the house, but it didn’t happen. Well OK, I got some stuff done, just not as much as I wanted to. It’s tough getting much done around the holidays, even when you only consider the social and family obligations. Then you add two young children to the mix, and that’ll be all she wrote. Next year I may rethink the long break, and maybe do a week around the holidays and another week a little later in January or Feburary.

In any case, I did manage to get several solid hours of work in on Michael’s bedroom, mainly trying to fix up the water-damaged area around the window seat. It’s a huge mess. I finally got all the crumbling plaster removed, and squared up all the openings, so I can patch the areas with drywall. The Dremel diamond wheel does a pretty good job at cutting through the plaster topcoat. If I run a shop vac at the same time, there’s not much dust. However, the Dremel isn’t the ideal tool for making square cuts in the plaster, because the tool itself is wider than the cutting wheel. I was able to make do with it, but what I really need is a tool that won’t get in the way of the cut, like a tiny angle grinder.

It will be really interesting to see how the finished product ends up looking. There are some issues with using drywall to patch plaster. It’s hard to get the drywall exactly flush with the existing plaster surface. In particular, the thickness of the plaster can vary from place to place, while drywall is always a single uniform thickness. I think I’ve got it pretty close, and my current plan is to skim-coat everything with drywall mud to get a smooth surface. I’m cautiously optimistic that this will give me a good final surface. Time will tell.

Once the window seat area is done, I have the other walls to prep. The existing paint is in horrible shape, so it looks like I’ll be doing more skim-coating…

OK, so here’s the current plan for the basement floor drains.

I haven’t quite finished poking and prodding the drains in the office and the back basement, but assuming the configuration is the same as what I predicted in my previous post, I want to scope them out with a video drain inspection system like the Ridgid SeeSnake. I think it’s the only way I’m going to find anything concrete out about their configuration. SunBelt Rentals, which has a location in Laurel, rents the SeeSnake at a base rate of $126 a day, which seems reasonable.

Assuming I can get my hands on a SeeSnake, I may need to do some surgery on the drain(s) to do my inspection, depending on which SeeSnake model is available. The camera on the base model is 1.75″ in diameter, which is too large to fit through the bell trap opening in the drains. I’ll need to enlarge the opening to about 2″. The drain is cast iron, so I will initally try using a tungsten carbide hole saw. Home Depot has one for around $12-$15 that I hope will do the job; Grainger has some much more expensive models. Drilling the drain(s) out will lose the bell trap functionality, but that’s not a huge loss because I don’t have bell trap covers for most of the drains anyhow.

During the SeeSnake rental, I may want to simultaneously rent a power drain auger with cutter blade. This will allow me to inspect, then clear obstructions, reinspect again, etc.

12/12 – A week or so ago I checked out the carbide hole saw that Home Depot sells. It looks a little too shallow to clear the raised bell trap opening and reach the area where it would need to cut. As a workaround, I might want to try using a sawzall to make shallow radial cuts through the opening, so I can break off the raised area. Home Depot also sells tungsten carbide sawzall blades.

Also, today I was able to confirm that the bar sink drain ties into the floor drain plumbing. With the drain plumbing relatively empty (it’s been several days since it rained) I ran a large volume of water down the bar sink, and I was able to see the water flowing through the drains in the office and the back basement. This also confirms that the drains flow from east to west, and it raises the possibility of using the bar drain as an entry point for the video snake. Access is a little tough under the sink, though.

I’m slowly learning more about our basement floor drains. I bought a small pump (a Little Giant PP-1) that sucks and discharges through a garden hose, and it does a wonderful job of pumping the drains out. A short length of hose easily fits down the drain, and I run the discharge into the office sump pump. The drain system holds quite a bit of water — as a point of reference, if the standing water is about 4″ below the top of the drains (a typical situation a couple days after rainfall) it takes roughly 20-25 minutes for the PP-1 to pump them out. This is slightly longer than the PP-1’s 15-minute duty cycle, so I have to do it in two “shifts”.

With most of the water out of the drains, I’m more able to inspect the drains and see how water flows through them. In the back part of the basement, It appears that the 4″ vertical drain pipe goes directly down to a cast iron “T”. If I run a tape measure down the drain, I’m able to get it to go in either direction a good ways. This seems to indicate that the lateral line is directly underneath the drain, and it’s 4″ cast iron. If that’s indeed the case, then that is good news, because it will be easy to get a sewer auger into the line.

What’s still not clear, is where the drain lets out, and why it collects so much water. The line is a good 7 feet below grade. As to the water, my theory is that the people who did the waterproofing in the well room area tied these drains in with that system, and the water from that drain tile is draining through the floor drain pipes. Since the floor drain pipes are plugged up, the water collects until it overflows into the well room sump pump. It’s really the only theory that would account for the volume of water that collects in the drains (the water problems in the well room area are another, totally separate issue…)

Next steps: I’d like to prove the theory that the lateral line is directly under the drains. I think I can do this by running a snake down one drain and seeing if I can spot it in a different drain. Then, I want to empty the drains and observe what happens during a rain storm. That will (hopefully) confirm that the water is coming from the well room and not the other direction. And then finally, I can look into snaking the line, doing a video inspection, etc.

I’ve decided to try to figure out our basement floor drains. My goal is to ascertain:

• How the drains themselves are configured;
• Where the plumbing goes;
• Why they seem to hold water indefinitely; and
• Why they back up into the basement during heavy rainstorms.

My goal is to either fix the existing drain system (I’m assuming it’s clogged), or reroute the drains somewhere else, like a sump pit. A third, less desirable, option would be to just close the drains up completely. But I’d rather keep the drains around, because (properly working) floor drains provide cheap insurance against flooding from things such as burst washing machine hoses, busted water heaters, etc.

My current hunch is that the drains tie into an old network of underground pipes that also used to handle the rain downspouts. I’ve abandoned most of these in favor of downspout extenders and splash blocks. However, the pipe openings are still there, and they still collect some water in rain storms. Assuming the original piping is plugged up, this could account for the rising water in the drains during rain storms.

[More:]

Yesterday, I tried sucking some water out of one of the drains using a wet/dry vac and some PVC piping sized to fit into the drain openings. I’d estimate I sucked out around 20 gallons before giving up — much too labor intensive. However, I managed to get the water level down around 2 1/2″, and the water dropped around the same amount in all the floor drains I checked, which seems to confirm that the floor drains are tied together, and that the pipes underneath them are relatively clear. There’s still too much water to see all the way down to the bottom of the drain, though. Interestingly enough, after 12 hours or so, the water level had crept back up around 1/2″. No rain during that period, and I’m relatively sure it’s not ground water — our water table is not that high.

Next up, I want to get the drains completely free of water, and try to figure out where the pipe exits the drain. Apparently there’s quite a bit of water down there. So, I’m going to need a better (less labor intensive) way to get the water out. I’m going to try a drill powered pump, with the discharge going into the sump pump pit. With the drain free of water, I’ll try to get an idea where it goes, and see if there’s any chance of getting a snake down there.

With the drains empty, I’ll then try flooding a couple of the downspout pipes outside, and see if any of the water ends up in the drains. That will tell me whether they all tie together. At that point, can make some decisions as to what to do next.

Aah, the joy of old houses. Stay tuned!

Wednesday, I took the day off work and moved the bulk of the circuits off our old FPE “Federal Noark” panel, to the new Square D QO panel. There are three circuits remaining to be done, all of which are connected via conduit, so I’ll need to reroute these before I can rip the FPE panel off the wall. I’ve blocked off next Wednesday to do this, as the wife -n- kids figure to be out of the house most of the day, and I have no meetings at work.

As with every other project in this house, half the work seems to involve fixing shoddy previous-owner retrofit work I encounter along the way, and this project has been no exception. Here’s what I’ve found and fixed so far.

1. Old QO subpanel didn’t have its netural bus isolated from ground. New panel has a separate ground bus and an isolated neutral bus.
2. The basement clubroom exhaust fan circuit was wired with 14 gauge wire but had a 30 amp breaker. It now has a 15 amp breaker.
3. Whole house fan circuit was doubled up with one of the lighting circuits. Someone probably did this at one point to free up a slot. They are now two separate circuits again.
4. The wiring to the boiler room/office light switch had individual strands of wire running unprotected behind the paneling. Apparently, when the room was finished, someone removed some conduit but didn’t bother to replace the wire. I replaced it with romex.

I’m sure there’ll be more to come..

Today I officially began my project to replace two Federal Pacific circuit breaker panels in my house. I’m starting with a subpanel in the boiler room, and after that’s done I’ll move on to the house’s main panel.

Ironically, the first step to doing this was to replace a perfectly good Square-D QO subpanel in the boiler room. This panel was upstream of the FPE panel (which is totally full — a previous owner added the QO panel to add capacity). The plan is to consolidate both panels into a single QO panel, but the existing one was too small. So step one was to replace it with a 24-slot QO. Next, I’ll move all the circuits over from the FPE panel.

Wiring the new panel was pretty easy as far as these things go — no big surprises. The QO panels are very nicely laid out, with neutral busses on either side, for example, so there’s no need to cut conductors to different lengths. The only thing I didn’t care for was the placement of the separate ground bus (required by code for subpanels) which was at the very bottom of the panel. A couple of my existing ground wires were not long enough to reach the bus (keep in mind the new panel is several inches taller than the old one). But this wasn’t too hard to work around.

Phase two, as mentioned, will be to move the circuits off the FPE panel. I’ll need to set aside a day for this, as there’s some conduit that’ll need to be rerouted, plus some wires that will need to be spliced to reach over to the new panel. I’ll probably try to do this the week after we get back from the beach — no sense rushing it with the beach trip looming and lots of other stuff to take care of.

At long last, I got the planetary alignment needed to caulk the pool deck joints, so I did it this morning. First lesson learned: I need to wear disposable gloves when doing this. Because as bad as I thought silicone caulk stuck to my hands, polyurethane caulk is 10 times worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m still peeling this stuff off my fingers when I’m 60.

The actual job went very quickly. The caulk flows very easily. The important thing is to mask the joint on both sides. I went through 2+ rolls of masking tape, but it was well worth it. If I hadn’t, the caulk would have been all over the map. I went through 8 29-oz tubes of caulk to do this portion of the pool (I couldn’t do the entire pool because the coping stones are off on the deep end side). I imagine I’ll need 4 to 6 additional tubes to complete the job once the coping is repaired. Not too bad, and the Sikaflex stuff I used was much less expensive than using Deck-o-Seal or some other pool-specific product.

It will be interesting to see how well the joint holds up. There are a couple spots I’m concerned about, where the backer rod was a little close to the surface, and I suspect the caulk bead might be too thin. If these areas fail, I’ll just touch them up as needed. I’m confident that most of the joint will be sound.

The color of the stuff is interesting. Sika calls it “sandstone”, but it looks more like “calamine lotion” to me. For some reason, Home Depot carried only this color and gray — no white. It really doesn’t look too bad, just a little more pinkish than I expected. I wonder how it’ll weather.

It seems to cure pretty fast. When I was finishing up, the areas I had done first were already starting to solidify. The directions say that a full cure takes from 48-72 hours. Given the weather forecast (sunny / upper 80s), I’m guessing I’ll be at the early end of that window.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll do one last joint that I haven’t stuffed with backer rod yet. All in all, this wasn’t a hard job at all. If I have to do it again down the road, I should be able to do everything in a single weekend. The other nice thing is, I have an idea now how much caulk I need for the job. So if Home Depot stops carrying it or something, I won’t have to guess how much to order.

Over the past weekend, I came to the conclusion that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with my swimming pool repair project this year.

The moment of enlightenment came on Saturday, when I spent most of the day working on the pool. It occurred to me that to effectively re-bed my loose coping stones, I’m going to need to grind a lot more mortar off the bond beam than I was originally planning. Otherwise, the stones are either going to be uneven, or they’re going to sit up too high. Grinding the beam down is going to require a power tool such as an electric or pneumatic chipping hammer. And, it’ll make enough of a mess that I think the pool will need to be drained. And, that means it’s not happening this year.

So, I’ve elected to put off the major repairs until spring (probably late April or early May). This summer, I’ll make repairs to the deck and caulk the expansion joint in the areas where the coping is sound. I should be able to finish that up over the next couple of weekends. Then when I close the pool, I’ll tarp the areas where the coping is off. Then I’ll drain the pool next April around the same time I would normally start up the equipment.

This past weekend, I got most of the expansion joint cleaned and filled it with foam backer rod. I learned something about backer rod in the process: After about 24 hours in the joint, it “settles” lengthwise. My butt joints now have about 1/2″ of space between them. No problem, I can fill them with little bits of backer rod. But, I’m glad I didn’t caulk right away.

With the pool empty next spring, I’ll have the opportunity to do some maintenance, such as..

• Touch-up areas of loose or peeling paint
• Inspect and re-caulk around light niches, return jets, main drain, etc.
• Inspect and repair a return jet that appears to have a threadded sleeve stuck in it
• Patch skimmers where necessary
• Inspect shell cracks and re-putty where necessary
• Install an overflow line (maybe)
• And of course, repair the coping stones and tile in the deep end

Hopefully after that, I’ll be good for another 5 years.

I love pool ownership. Really, I do.

Work on the pool coping project continues slowly but surely. I didn’t intend for this to be an all-summer project, but that’s how it’s turning out. The hot weather has really slowed it down, which is not all bad, as it’s keeping me from overextending myself. I’ve done most of my recent work in the early mornings on weekends.

Today I finally finished prepping the individual coping stones for re-mortaring. This involved using a hammer and chisel to laboriously chip old, loose mortar off the bottom of the stones. From the appearence of the mortar, it looks like someone attempted a similar repair at some point in the past. Hopefully, this one will last a bit longer — that was the idea behind saw-cutting the expansion joint, anyhow.

Next up is to chip any loose stuff off the top of the bond beam, and finish cleaning out the expansion joint at the deep end. Also, one of the coping stones needs to be glued together. This week I’ll figure out what product I need for that. Weather permitting, next weekend I’ll try to get all this prep work finished up so that I’ll be ready to reattach the stones.

I will update this entry as I gather info.

Continuing in my grand tradition, I’m writing about yet another house project that I’d like to do… the problem, as always, is finding the time for it..

We have two circuit breaker panels which really should be replaced. They are FPE panels with known safety issues. One panel is our main house panel, and the other is a subpanel. The FPE subpanel is fed by a third subpanel, a Square-D QO type.

The Square-D subpanel has 20 slots, of which only 9 are currently in use. Because we’ve abandoned a few circuits in the FPE subpanel that it feeds, I could actually squeeze all the circuits into the Square-D if I wanted. However, if I did that, the panel would be full with no room for future expansion. So.. it would probably make sense to replace both subpanels with a single 24-slot Square-D QO type.

I would need a panel, a cover, and a ground bar kit, as well as a bunch of breakers. It looks like the project would cost around $500. Probably worth it for the safety and peace of mind — maybe I should slate it for this winter.

The main house panel is a bigger project. I would need to involve BG&E to get them to shut off my power at the meter, and to tell me what kind of service I have — the panel is 150 amps, but it appears that the service may be 200 amps. In this case, I’d get a 200amp, 40-slot panel. This project would probably run closer to $1000. If I can get the subpanel project under my belt this winter, maybe I could tackle the main panel next winter. Again, the main issue is finding time and prioritizing it amongst all the other stuff that has to get done around here.