Jul 9 - I hate plumbing !!)*^Z)(

So, buoyed by my quick success with the kitchen hot water tank, I had two more projects to tackle -- adding valves and hose connections to the Takagi on-demand and replacing the corrugated hose in the effluent tank.  Both seemed pretty straightforward, well, not really.

Early in the morning I shut off the water supply to the Takagi and drained the hot water lines.  Neither of us were taking showers in the morning anyway and Sandy does laundry with cold water.  The kitchen is taken care of separately, especially since I'm now feeding that tank from the cold water supply.

Cutting into the hot line (out) line, I added the Sharkbite ball valve and the 3/4 Sharkbite Slip-T with hose bib.  That was pretty easy.

Cutting into the cold line (in), I added the Sharkbite ball valve, removed the existing threaded valve that was attached right at the Takagi then prepped 3/4 copper from the ball valve to an elbow, more copper, another elbow, more copper to a Sharkbite with female threads that's now screwed on where the old ball valve was.  The point here is that I want valves on both the hot and cold and I want them past their respective hose bibs so that I can pump water through the Takagi without impacting the rest of the house.

Having learned from a plumber in New Smyrna that the trick to soldering copper is to use fresh paste (acid), I put all the copper pieces together and soldered the two elbows.  It was a work of art.  The solder flowed into the joints perfectly.  The two ends of this assembly were then inserted into the Sharkbites at the valve and at the straight-through connection at the Takagi.

It was all too easy.

I turned on the cold water and ... what ?  ... leak from one of the elbows ... what ?  not from the soldered connection but from a tiny pin-hole in the elbow itself ... what ?  Rats !  It turned out that the elbow actually had a hairline crack, once I got all this apart which of course took more time than assembly.  Luckily I had one more elbow and I had to replace one of the 4" sections of pipe ... soldered it all together again ... looked water-tight but wasn't as pretty as before.  I put it back into place.  All's good.

Wait, all's not quite good.  I'd used my usual Rectorseal gook at the threaded connections -- the two hose bibs as well as the connection at the Takagi.  A tiny drop of water formed at the Takagi.  Luckily Sharkbites can be turned, so I unscrewed that, added teflon tape and more Rectorseal, screwed it back together again ... voila ... that's done.  It turned out to be as painful as this write-up !

Ok, do I really want to do more plumbing ?  Not really, but in the meantime I helped Sandy by taking multiple loads of leaves and stuff that she'd been raking, dumping all that up at the top of the driveway.  She's got more out there now but has quit for the day.  I'll haul that tomorrow, probably another half-dozen loads.

So back to the plumbing.  I pulled the effluent pump out and attached the braided hose, dropped it down ... wait, this isn't quite what I expected, unlike the cheap corrugated hose, it folds over on itself way too easily, kinks.  I drop the ladder into the tank and head down ... yuck ... this ain't going to work.  I cave and cut it about 18" long and attach that to the outlet, lie the pump down so that it will prime (I remembered) and headed out of the tank.

Inside the house, I ran water so that the sewage pump cycled a few times, then went out and looked at the tank.  Plugging in the pump, it started right up so I then pulled on the rope to make it vertical but I'd miscalculated and the rope and electrical wires were all tangled up.  It might have worked but was an accident waiting to happen -- in this case the accident would be that the wires impede the on/off float and the pump doesn't go on.  Back into the tank I go ... yuck again ... sort it all out and head out of the tank.

Well, we're running again.  It's obviously more efficient without 8' of corrugated hose that was somewhat leaking although patched with duct tape.  I'm left back in the situation that I was trying to address with a longer hose, however, if something goes wrong with the pump, it's back in the tank I go.  There are all sorts of things that I could do with secondary pumps etc. to avoid this being a single point of failure, but it's not worth it.

Thoroughly yucked up and grossed out, I had a long hot shower.

There are three pumps that make this place liveable.  Way down deep, there's the pump from the well.  Jason and I could  back each other up on that score by simply running a 1" pipe with a shut-off valve between our two houses.  That would have been easier to install way back when I put in both wells, but didn't.  Replacing one or the other pump with certainly be a PITA!

The second pump is my sewage pump.  I can live longer without water than without sewage. I'd know pretty quickly if that pump failed, as it did one New Years Eve ... but that's a blog from long ago.  The third is the effluent pump, which can break down and I wouldn't know it.

The expected service life of these pumps is long but they can fail and of course they fail without warning at inconvenient times and during the winter, of course.

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Chicken on the barbie for dinner with oven-baked brussels sprouts.  Good.

Onward !