I swung by Lowes today to see what kind of mortar (and mortar ingredients) they carry. Neither they nor Home Depot seem to carry white Portland cement, so unless I go through a supplier or lumber yard, it looks like my only choice is gray mortar. However, I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing. Most of the stuff is going underneath the stones, where it won’t be seen. Gray Portland is cheaper than white Portland. What about using gray mortar to bond the stones, then filling in the gaps and other visible areas with white grout? That might be a plan. I just need to look into what kind of “grout” (I put that in quotes, because grout, mortar, etc. all seem to be basically the same thing, namely portland cement, sand, and additives in varying ratios) I would need to get.

Lowes carrys Quikrete products (Home Depot carries Sakrete). They have a bewildering variety of different Quikrete products on the shelf…

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Number	Description	Bag Weight	Bag Price
1102	Mortar Mix	60lbs	$4.00
1125	Type N Masonry Cement	70lbs	$8.00
1125	Type S Masonry Cement	70lbs	$8.50
1136	Mason Mix – Type S Mortar	60lbs	$4.50
1136-58	Blended Mortar Mix	80lbs	$5.32
1124	Portland Cement Type I/II	94lbs	$9.64
1103	Sand/Topping Mix	60lbs	$4.00
1230	“Quikwall” Surface Bond Cement – White	50lbs	$17.00
1962	Medium Sand	50lbs	$5.00
1152	All-Purpose Sand	50lbs	$2.90
1133	Vinyl Concrete Patch	40lbs	$13.43
1585	Precision Grout	50lbs	$14.00

The task now, is to go through all of these, check the Quikrete web site to see what’s actually in each of them, and determine which product(s) are appropriate for my job. Stay tuned.

Today I officially got the pool project underway, after 6 weeks or so of procrastination. After a week of foul weather, I finally got a decent day, so I took off work and rented the concrete saw. It did the job quite nicely, and quickly enough that I only needed a 4-hour rental.

It took a bit of time to get the hang of the saw, but it was very easy to use. The blade had no problem cutting through the entire slab. The water feed did a great job of keeping the dust to a minimum, and it probably sped the job up by keeping the blade cool. I was not able to cut any of the curved areas, which I sorta expected. Not sure how I would handle these. A 7″ angle grinder might work for the area around the steps, but the corners are a little too tight for any kind of rotary blade.

Next I need to clear the joint and clean up the mess, which figures to be more time consuming than the cutting. The wet concrete dust forms a kind of pasty mud, which sticks to the deck and won’t fully vacuum up. I’ll probably end up using my pressure washer to clean it off the deck.

With the joint partially cleared, I can see that a lot of the fill around the pool has eroded over the years, from water seeping into the joint. I’m not planning on doing anything about it, as I’d need to demolish the deck (that’s a job for the next owner of the house). But, once I caulk the joint it’ll stop any further erosion.

Once I’ve cleaned the joint I may go ahead and fill it (at least partially) with backer rod, to keep junk from falling into it before it’s caulked. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish prepping the joint over the long weekend; then I can focus on re-mortaring the loose coping stones.

Oh, and the stupid Tulip Poplars have already started dropping leaves, and it’s not even July yet. It’s going to be a long summer..

Time to get started on the pool repair project.. better late than never I suppose. I’ve blocked off this coming Thursday to rent a concrete saw and cut back the expansion joint. Also, I’ve been thinking a lot more about what to use to mortar the coping stones in place. Terry Tamminen’s excellent book, The Ultimate Pool Maintenance Manual, includes instructions for making what he calls “patch mix”, using white portland cement and sand. He uses this same stuff (possibly with different ingredient ratios; I don’t have the book here to confirm) for patching plaster, anchoring coping stones, and grouting stones and tile. I think this might be the way to go, rather than buying premixed bags of mortar as I was originally planning. Just need to find a supplier. I’m not too confident that the big boxes will stock white portland. If not, I’ll try my favorite lumber yard. Will work on researching this over the next few days. (Update 6/22.. no sign of white portland at Home Depot).

Oh, and the loose strip of waterline tile in the deep end fell off all by itself two days ago. I had to dive in to fish it out. Remarkably, it stayed completely intact, leaving me with a roughly 2-foot strip of mortar and pool tile, and the beam behind it is fairly clean too. I need to decide if I want to try to re-attach it, or just start over and retile (I have plenty of extra tile, so either is an option). This is the last step of the project, and won’t be happening until fall when I can lower the water level, so I’ve got plenty of time to think about it.

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6/21: Informative posting on poolforum.com about setting pool tile.

6/22: Well, I decided to scrap my plans for the day due to unfavorable weather. However, I did go to Home Depot to take a better look at the concrete saw. I found out:

• They supply all the fuel mixture I need (it’s a 2-cycle engine as I suspected)
• There is roughly 5-6 inches from the blade to the outer edge of the dolly wheel on one side. This should be sufficient clearance to run the dolly along the pool coping edge. It will be helpful if the wheel height can be adjusted independently on either side to accommodate uneven surfaces.. but, I didn’t think to ask.
• The saw includes a water feed, which is great because it should really help cut down on dust.
• I don’t think it’ll fit in my car, so I’ll need to borrow my parents’ pickup.

Now, I just need to wait for the weather to cooperate, so I can get this done. Based on the 5-day forecast, I might be waiting awhile..

6/28: The crappy weather is finally moving out of the area, so the job is back on the calendar for Friday. Fingers crossed.

Well, May starts tomorrow, and with it comes… the pool project. This is sure to be the topic of many entries over the next couple months.

Background: Late last summer I noticed a loose strip of waterline tile in the deep end of the pool. Further investigation revealed that all of the coping stones in the deep end had also popped loose. Long story short, I planned the repair for this spring. Basic plan is to:

1. Sawcut the expansion joint (between deck and coping) so the deck doesn’t contact the pool shell;
2. Rebed the loose coping;
3. Recaulk the expansion joint.

I’m putting the waterline tile repair off till next year, as it’s mainly cosmetic and I’ve got other stuff to keep me busy this summer..

#1 and #2 are pretty straightforward; for #3, the common practice is to use a self-leveling polyurethane caulk. There’s a pool-specific product called Deck-O-Seal which is commonly used. Of course, being pool specific, it’s pricey. There are other equivalent products sold under different trade names, which are somewhat less expensive if you can find a decent supplier. The brand names I’ve run across include Vulkem, Sonneborn, and Sikaflex. My hope is to find a local supplier for this stuff; that way I avoid paying shipping, and if I need more, I can just run out and get some (possibly multiple times). Anyhow, the great news is, today I found the Sikaflex product at Home Depot in the concrete aisle. Hard to beat Home Depot for convenience.

Now that I have somewhere I can buy the sealant, I can focus on planning the job and getting it done. The plan right now is to start this around mid-May, so I have some time to finish up other projects first. Depending on when we decide to uncover the pool, it may get pushed back… we’ll see.

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!

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!

I finally got back to working on my endless plumbing project today.

A couple weeks back, I pressure tested the new branch I ran for the outside sillcock. To do this, I soldered a female adapter onto a 12″ length of pipe, screwed a quick-connect air coupling into it, and attached the other end to my branch with a compression fitting. Then I hooked it up to the compressor, cranked it up to around 30psi, and let it sit. There was a v-e-r-y slow loss of pressure, maybe 1psi or so over several hours. This was a little troubling, but it didn’t necessarily mean there was a leak (it could be the stop valve packing, the compression fitting, or even the regulator gauge). It did make me fairly confident I didn’t have any “gushers” or “blowout” type leaks.

This morning I got the idea to use a couple compression fittings and hook the branch up to my existing plumbing. That way I can be absolutely sure that the branch holds water, and when I’m ready to make the final repair, I won’t have to worry about the branch leaking. So, that’s what I did today. Cut a short piece of copper to fit between the existing plumbing and the new branch, shut off the water, drained the plumbing, and hooked the whole mess together. When I turned the water back on, I found my pressure loss pretty quickly: it was a slow drip at the stop valve, where the valve “guts” screw into the valve body. I had taken the valve apart to sweat it, and it just needed to be tightened a bit. I also had to tighten one of the compression joints. Other than that, everything looks good, and I can finally use the sillcock I put in 6 months ago (just in time for the dead of winter. But hey — it’s frost-free)!

With that, the only thing left is to make the original repair, which was the driving force behind this entire project. Maybe I’ll get around to that by next January or so.

I’ve got this plumbing project in my basement, that I’ve been working at for what seems like about a year now.

It started with my wife finding a leaky pipe. The leak was (is) at a copper tee, where a 3/4″ line branches out to 2 1/2″ lines. It was (is) leaking at a rate of a drop every 5 minutes or so. I put a bucket under it. This was last spring or so. The bucket is still there.

One of the 1/2″ branches goes to an outside sillcock. The original sillcock was unoperational (frozen up, clogged, whatever). So I decided, well, I need to take this all apart anyhow, so I might as well replace the sillcock. So I cut the branch, capped it near the tee, and took out the sillcock and all the old plumbing going to it. Then I routed new copper pipe back to the tee. That was last summer. Over the next couple months, I sweated most of the fittings along the new line. I’m not what you would call an expert at sweating copper, particularly where it comes to valves. Now, I’m at the point where I need to test my new branch for leaks, replace the tee, and connect everything back up. I’m not looking forward to it, so I’m putting it off.

I’m thinking about pressure testing the new branch to find leaks. Here’s the current plan.

1. Take a short length of pipe, and sweat a female adapter onto one end
2. Screw a quick-connect air coupling into the adapter
3. Attach the other end to my branch using a compression coupling
4. Attach air compressor, close all valves, crank up to 30PSI or so
5. Leave it that way for awhile and see if it holds the pressure.

I figure if I use a compression fitting, that will allow me to reuse this contraption on other projects.

Once I’m satisfied the branch is leak-free, I can hook it up to the live plumbing, which is what I’m really not looking forward to. For some reason, I find plumbing projects like this infinitely more daunting than electrical projects. See, with an electrical project, if I hit a snag I can usually get away with leaving a branch circuit off for a day or two. Just plug stuff into different outlets, run some extension cords, whatever. This is not the case with plumbing. There is absolutely no way I’m getting away with leaving the water shut off for a day or two. If I screw up, I’m really screwed, so to speak. No, the job needs to get done right, the first time. And anyone who’s ever done plumbing knows that there are always “gotchas” lurking around the corner, waiting to spring on you after you’ve shut off the main and cut all the pipes apart. Then, when you get everything back together, you have to hope that you got everything right and nothing leaks. To me, plumbing has always seemed like more of a crap-shoot than electrical work. This is improving somewhat as I get more experience, but I’m still dreadding this project.

More (maybe a couple years) later when I get back to this project..

Subject says it all! I finished the wiring up today, installed the fan control, and replaced an outlet while I was at it. All my extra wiring turned out to be worth the effort — there’s absolutely no way I would have gotten the fan control in the wall box with all the extra wires there. It’s enough of a challenge just getting these controls in the box with only one wire. Which brings me to my obligatory gripe of the day. These fan controls (Lutron Skylark model) are great. They seem well-made and reliable. But I hate installing them. They’re so deep that they barely fit in a standard-depth wall box. And on top of that, they have pigtails, and you have to fit three wirenuts (four if you’re attaching the ground) in the box, in addition to the control. This makes them very bad for retrofit work, particularly in older houses where the boxes tend to be smaller. If there’s more than one cable going into your wall box, you can pretty much forget it. It’d be much nicer if these controls could be backwired (stick wire in hole, tighten screw), to eliminate the need for wirenut splices. Maybe Lutron will eventually figure this out. Unfortunately it’ll be too late to help me out.

Anyhow, the only thing left now is to remount the fan and clean up all the plaster chunks, insulation and other crap that fell out of the hole in the ceiling. I’d say we can pretty much stick a fork in this project.

I spent the afternoon in the attic today, and got the lion’s share of the wiring done for the fan project. Last week I fished the wire from the basement to the attic. It was pretty straightforward. Some medium-duty nylon rope was the ticket. I dropped it down into the stud cavity from the attic, went into the basement, poked up a hooked piece of stiff wire, snagged the rope, and pulled it through. Then I used the rope to pull the romex up from the basement into the attic. The two keys to doing this successfully are:

1. Electrical tape; and
2. A helper.

Just tape the romex to the end of the rope with plenty of electrical tape, go up to the attic, and have your helper feed the cable up from the basement while you pull it up. This can be done by yourself, but you’ll get lots of exercise running upstairs and downstairs to unkink the romex.

The first job today was to get the old box and brace out of the ceiling to make room for the new fan-approved brace and box. Every time I do this, I’m reminded of how much I hate those metal ceiling box braces that nail to the underside of the joists. There’s no way to get them all the way out without tearing up the ceiling. Plus, the weight of the fixture tends to pull the nails loose over time, which is not good news for the ceiling, or for the person standing under the fixture when it eventually comes crashing down.

The trick to getting these out is to cut them, removing the center part and leaving the ends nailed to the joists. I’ve found that the best tool for this is a Dremel rotary tool with a cutoff wheel. I’ve used a hacksaw, and it’s laborious (the bars are actually pretty thick metal) and the sawing action can damage the ceiling (and your knuckles). The Dremel is not perfect (if you breathe wrong on the cutoff wheels, they break), but believe me, it is far superior to sawing.

This bar came out easier than others I’ve done. Once I cut one side, the other side just swung out of the way (because, of course, the nails had pulled loose).

The actual wiring was complicated but straightforward. There were a lot of wires in the old box (it fed two different downstream branches). Rather than put everything back into the fixture box, I mounted a second junction box, wired everything up to that, and ran a single 12/3 cable to the fixture box carrying two switched hots (lights and fan) and neutral. This makes for a neater job and lets me use a larger box for all of my splices.

Just a couple parting tips for doing this kind of work:

1. Invest in a pair of knee pads (or “kneelers”). Your knees will thank you for it.
2. If your house has lots of BX wiring like mine, invest $25 or so for a good quality rotary BX cutter. It’s absolutely worth its weight in gold, which you’ll appreciate if you’ve ever tried to cut BX with a hacksaw.

Almost done now, just need to wire up the fan control, route the wire in the basement, and remount the fan.