Posts
Walls:
All of the walls in the apartment are now installed. About 80% of the drywall has been completely finished: taped, "mudded", sanded and re-mudded/re-sanded if necessary. The rest will be done this weekend.
The bedroom has been painted (primer and finish) as has more than half of the large living area and virtually all of the kitchen end of the large room. As soon as the last drywall sanding is done, these will be finished quickly. The bathroom is the last room to be finished. Also the entire stairway area is awaiting drywall finishing and paint.
It has a lot of angles and surfaces due to the turn in the stairs and the positioning of the radiant heat control panel above the stairs.While installing drywall on the stairway we were able to add a nice little shelf above the stairs which can be used to display art or some nice heirloom or, dare I admit, knick-knack. You can see it to the right, looking down from a few steps above the half-way landing.
Plumbing:
The utility room is plumbed for the washer and I'm running a load or two every day or so. Sandy won't be gong to the laundromat again.
The bathroom toilet and shower are plumbed and working, though the shower surround is not quit finished. Of course, for these to be turned on we had to install the hot water heater. Soon two small bases will be made for the cabinets we got at an auction to serve as support for the bathroom vanity. When they are ready and placed the sink can be connected to the PEX lines and the drain can be attached.
The drain is in place for the kitchen sink and awaiting the final placement of the sink cabinet. This is delayed while we decide on what type of counter tops to buy or build.
Along the way, two very serious snags were encountered. One will be described under the "Heat" heading. The other was the water distribution manifold itself.
When the water heater was connected we turned on the water at the meter outside. Then it was turned on inside where it enters the building. Before water could come in, air had to be let out, so the cold water inlet for the water heater was turned on, and the overflow valve was held open while the cold water forced out all of the air in the system up to that point. So far, so good. No leaks, no problems.
Then we opened the output valve on the water heater to allow water to flow back to the distribution manifold on the "hot" side. Oops! A pin-hole-sized leak appeared on the top of the manifold. After carefully checking the connections we determined that it was a flaw in the manifold. A call to the manufacturer linked me with the regional rep who promised that they would reimburse us for the cost of a replacement. I called the supplier and ordered a new manifold and tried to put the problem out of my mind until it arrived. The replacement is working fine.
Heat: (Warning, lots of detail ahead.)
The entire radiant heat system was connected and ready to fill with water.
Here's what it looked like before some of the opening was covered with drywall.
Prior to filling with water we attached an air hose to be sure the system held pressure. It didn't! Bummer. What to do?
Spritzing the system with soapy water showed there to be a leak on the board that was built by the Floorheat company. A call to them quickly authorized me to bring in a plumber to re-"sweat" the connection. The entire system was pressure tested prior to shipment, but a leak had developed since then. A plumber fixed that problem pretty quickly and we turned on the air pressure again. It seemed to hold so the system was left under pressure overnight.
Bad news in the morning... the pressure had dropped. There was a leak somewhere in the nearly 800 feet of aluminum-clad tubing. Of course it was possible there was a flaw in the product, but this was very unlikely and proved not to be so.
Since there are three lines on the system I had to isolate each one to determine which had the leak. One end of the line has a valve, but the other end does not, so just turning off the various lines in turn would not tell where the leak was because the open ends of the lines were all open to each other. I had to disconnect and cap one line at a time to see if the other two held pressure. (This assumed the problem was only on one line.)
At one point in the installation I had caused a slight kink in a line. I thought I had caught it before it damaged the tube, but it at least gave me a point on a specific line to start my search for a leak. So I isolated line 3 and cranked up the pressure. It held.
Line 3 had the leak so I took the screws out of the panel where the small kink had been to see if the leak was there. It wasn't. However, on that same section of the tubing there WAS a hole in the line, right in the middle of it. I had carelessly drawn the line too sharply on the cement board where the line curved. In retrospect there was no good reason to even be close to the line, but I thought it curved away two inches earlier than it did.
But what luck! With about 35 3' X 5' panels, the leak was in the first one I tried.
So the leak was found and I had to patch the line. The leak was on a curve which meant I couldn't just cut it out and replace it with a single connector since a connector would not fit on the curve where only the tube had been. So I cut out about a foot and a half in preparation for using two connectors to replace the cut out section.
When I purchased the connectors I bought two more than needed in case there was another leak. (Sadly, that proved to be a necessary action.) I repressurized the system and waited to see if it held the pressure. It seemed to be fine, but after a few hours the pressure had dropped enough to show there was another leak somewhere. At least I knew it was the same line, but where?
At this point, having nothing else to go on, I decided to unscrew any screw that was within a half inch of the lines drawn on the cement board. After undoing maybe a few dozen screws, I backed out another one and heard the rest of the air pressure in the system gush out. I had found the second leak. I repeated the process of cutting it out (also on a curve) and installing a new section with the other two connectors I had bought.
When I went to re-screw the two panels down it was obvious that the connectors, resting on the subfloor, were thicker than the plastic grid, and the panels could not be replaced without cutting out some of the thickness of the cement board where they touched. Once that was done the panels were screwed down and the pressure added.
Everything seemed to be fine, the pressure was holding, so I left for the night.
The next morning I found the pressure had dropped about 5 pounds. By the end of that day it had dropped about the same again. Multiple attempts to test the two fixes (four connectors) did not show any air bubbles when they were sprayed. By this time I was thoroughly discouraged and decided to take a day off from trying to solve this problem. Imagine trying to find a leak so slow it will not even make bubbles on the tubing. It could be anywhere on the 250-foot-long line three. What other strategy might work?
The next day I decided to try the soapy spray one more time. This time, though, I bent the two replacement sections up from the floor ever so slightly so I could be sure I'd see any bubbles that might appear on the bottom sides of the connectors. I pumped the lines up to 70 pounds per square inch (PSI) again and sprayed them. Again, no bubbles. There were still lots of other tasks to be done, so I decided to walk away from this problem for a little longer.
The next morning, when I walked past the system panel, I noticed the pressure was still at 70 PSI! I hadn't really done anything to fix the problem since the second set of connectors was installed. What had changed to make the system hold the pressure? There was obviously no other leak, so what had happened?
Here's the answer: One of the four connectors used to patch the leaking tubes was installed where the tube had literally been running right against the base plate for a wall section. (Anywhere a room dimension is not a multiple of 16 inches, the plastic grid must be trimmed to fit. In this case that trimming resulted in barely enough room for a run of the tubing.) When the connector was installed, the connector itself, being a tiny bit wider than the tube it was repairing, also was pressed against the base plate. This caused the tube to be so slightly askew with the connector, that it was barely noticeable.
When I pulled up the tubing at the fixed corners the night before, it took the pressure off the connection and allowed the tube to "set" parallel with the centerline of the connector. I chiseled about a quarter inch off the side of the base plate so the connector could be in line with the tubing which was still tight against the base plate. After two days like this, the line still held 70 PSI. We were ready for water in the line.
I'll finish this thread in a day or so. Next, "Another room."
