Main Line

Today, bright and early, the plumbers showed up and began work on the major replumbing of the house. They started by running a new water main in copper pipe as opposed to the galvanized pipe that had been there.

The old pipe is galvanized steel, which rusts inside and throws chunks of rust off into the lines regularly; we have to clean out the kitchen faucet about weekly. It's also pretty small, which means lower water pressure inside, so low that it takes several minutes to fill a water pitcher. We're having it replaced with 1-1/2" copper pipe -- the largest that can fit onto our water meter. We don't use a lot of water here (having an abundant supply on-site, after all), but when we do use it we want it to be THERE.

Being plumbers after my own heart, the guys were "working dry": installing the new water main right next to the old one so the service to the house is disrupted as little as possible. So we have not yet gotten to experience the wonders of the new pipe.

Tomorrow they will hook it up, move the water heater, and redo a bunch of other plumbing that was done with galvanized steel, too, like the kitchen sink. I can't wait.

Speaking of water, I checked out the sump today to see how it was chugging along.

There's not too much water in there, and all the water there is continues to come from only one of the drain pipes: the one connected to the drain field under the basement floor. I'm pleasantly surprised at how little water there is flowing in there: I expected that in the winter we would be deluged and the sump would run all the time (the guy across the street's sump does, after all). This is a very manageable amount of water. But we haven't really gotten into the rainy season yet, so this may change.

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posted by ayse on 12/19/05