Now that everything is cleaned up, we went and updated the plumbing and electrics.

Every bathroom needs it’s own 20 Amp circuit, so the electrician ran a new wire down to the panel in the basement, and replaced all the wiring to the bathroom. We installed a new fan and light combination, which is ducted through the attic to the outside.

New electrical box

In renovations, things that aren’t planned for do happen. A defective fitting on one of the new shower valve stops leaked into the kitchen below. It made a stain, but didn’t do any other damage. I had my  painter stain kill and paint that ceiling.  Hey, there are going to be problems in renovations. It’s not weather you have any problems, you probably will, it’s how your contractor deal with them that’s important.  We just fixed it.

We also replaced all the plumbing that we could get to. This included new hot and cold copper water piping to the basemen, and replacing all the drain piping that we could get to.

New drain tied into old

We replaced the drains and water piping for the sink and toilet

And we replaced the drains and water piping for the tub/shower, adding valves for future servicing, since there weren’t any there, but there is already an access panel

New bathub and shower piping

We then installed new plywood on the floor and set the cast iron bathtub in place. We installed backing in the whole side wall, since the owner wants a grab bar but hasn’t picked it out yet.

We closed up the walls with wallboard, and cement board and are tiling the bathroom now.

My customer’s bathroom is now gutted, but the cleanup is far from over. While the gutting crew was amazing, cleaning up is a lot of work. They aren’t too careful on de-nailing, so that ‘s the first thing to do. It’s not fun to keep getting caught on old nails and pieces of old wire lath. This bathroom tile was an old mud job, so there were little shirt and hand ripping remnants of wire lath left behind. The mud floor was installed on “cripples”, small pieces of rough boarding set on nailers in between the floor joists. We have ripped out many of these floors in the past thirty years. Sometimes they actually pointed the joist tops, but on this job that wasn’t done.
The biggest problem is all the stuff that falls into the joist spaces when you gut a floor like this. We strive to always clean up the joist spaces. I’ve cursed enough when I got pieces of smashed cast iron, rocks, boards, tile, and etc. in my face and on my head when demolishing that I don’t want to be one of those slobs. If you ever use a contractor that does that, FIRE THEM! There is really no excuse. It’s lazy and unprofessional. This is what it looked like after the gutting, but before the pre work cleanup:

Under the floor before cleanup

Under drum trap before cleanup

We then proceeded to de-nail the walls and floor, and then to clean up under the floor, at the base of the walls, over the door and window, etc. This is before we ripped out the old plumbing, or really before any other work. After all, who wants to work in a mess?:

Under the floor after the cleanup

As you can see, the plumbing wastes were old lead drum traps. There were actually a couple of spots that had started leaking, although it wasn’t showing down stairs:

Lead drum trap after cleanup

Drum trap after vacuming

In the next installment, I’ll show you what we did to upgrade the plumbing.

We just gutted a bathroom for a customer that I’ve been working for since my son was a baby- and he’s 36 now with 2 children of his own! This bathroom was probably original to the house, but the owners are very neat and everything was in amazingly good shape after 60 years or so! The tile was starting to crack in the bathtub area, and the whole bathroom, while very clean and tidy, needed an update.
When I worked at their house for the first time, I was a plumbing apprentice. I was moving a 2 pipe steam radiator. At that time I hadn’t spent the last 30 plus years seeking out steam knowledge, so when I look back it’s kind of frightening how little I knew about what I was doing. It worked fine, but not because I knew what I was doing!
Years later I did all the interior finishing of a 2 story addition, with a family room, a master bedroom, walk in closets and 2 bathrooms. I didn’t build the addition, but I did finish it after they experienced one of those all too common contractor nightmares. I don’t remember the details about the nightmare, but the addition still looks great because of the work we did. One interesting (at least to me) factoid was that I met a plumber on that job who worked for me for about 20 years and still fills in when we are busy. When we met, he was an electrician, and I was plastering the walls in the addition!
This bathroom is very tight for space, so the only choices were what color and what tile. When we are done, there will be no wall surface to paint, as the walls will be tile, door, window or mirror. A lot of mirror is a good way to make a small bathroom feel less claustrophobic.
The mirror job is a process. First we will do all the regular bathroom remodeling that lasts work, and then after the walls are plastered and the vanity and top are in , the mirror company will come and make a template of the mirror. The main mirror will have 2 cutouts, one for the medicine cabinet, and one for the light above it. One of the side mirrors will be cut out for the switches and plugs. Then they will go away and manufacture the mirror, and finally come back and install it. That should be the last thing that is done. Here is a link to the mirror company that we use: http://www.bannerglassshelmar.com/
The floor tile is a blue granite, so I’m going to take a sample to the counter top installer I use and have him make me a threshold and some pieces for a recessed soap dish. Hopefully we can match it fairly closely. Stone surfaces link: http://www.stonesurfacesinc.net/
We are also replacing the window with a duplicate. The old window is in bad shape so we are ordering a new one to match.
Luckily the owners have a summer home, so they won’t have to put up with too much of the disruption that we are causing. That means that we have a key, and the code to the alarm, so I go there every day to make sure that it’s set. I trust everyone who works for me, but I don’t really want to be telling a lot of people the alarm code. It just seems like a bad idea.

Have you had a lot of main drain stoppages? Had bad backups at inconvenient times? It may be that you have a house trap on your main drain line. These were commonly installed for many years, ending probably 40 years ago. They are illegal to install now, probably because they impede the flow of waste out to the sewer. Many of our customers have had us remove them.

Trap and Broken Main Cleanout Removed

Some house traps, like the one we just removed, are under the cellar floor, in a pit or under the concrete. We often have to jackhammer the concrete out, and dig around the trap, in order to remove it. Often the top of the house trap is the only access that the drain cleaner has to clear the lines out to the sewer, and they can’t always get a good cutting head around the trap, so the drain doesn’t really get cleaned out. The drain cleaner will often recommend getting the house trap out of there.

After we removed the house trap (sorry I couldn’t get a picture of the trap, as it was buried in fairly disgusting clay and STUFF, we installed a clean-out and a straight piece of pipe where the trap had been. In this case, we also installed 2 above the ground waste lines for the future, as we have concerns about the condition of the 2 main under ther floor drains, and rather than dig up the whole floor, in the future we can just abandon the old drains and run new ones above the floor. In this particular basement running the new lines above the floor won’t cause any problems, and it will save the homeowners a lot of money if it does need to be done.

New Main Cleanout and Future Drain

The main clean-out that heads out to the  street is required by law to be installed using lead and oakum joints, so that is the pipe that you see on the right. We brought it up above floor level so that no one would have to dig around in that mess in the future.

Inside of House Trap

It’s not that clear, but this is what the inside of the old trap looked like, after we smashed it open with a sledge.  It has thick deposits of waste, rust and STUFF built up inside it. No wonder these folks had to have the drains cleaned on Sunday night at about 10 PM

If you live in an older home, be sure and investigate this problem BEFORE you have to have a Sunday Night Waste Flood in the Basement!

Recently I had the great privilege of working for a client that wanted to preserve an existing vapor system.  This was in spite of the fact that they are planning on raising the roof and adding a small addition to their kitchen – a perfect time to modernize the heating system. They hadn’t moved into the house yet, and it was the winter, so they wanted to get some heat going so they could spend time there working and planning.

I realize that some of what I write below will be too technical for a lot of my readers. Just skip those parts, or write me a note if you want clarification and I’ll do what I can.

The existing boiler was no good. It was a gas boiler that looked like it had leaked quite a bit, and wasn’t firing right when it had been running. So the boiler had to go.

This particular vapor system was a Richardson system, which utilized specialized fittings on the return on each radiator, rather than the modern steam traps. These return ells are not available today (and probably haven’t been for 70 year or so), so we had to determine what to do with them. On examining each one, we discovered that the only thing that appeared to be wrong with them was that they utilized a brass ball as a sort of check valve, and over the years a lot of them had gone missing.  Otherwise, they appeared intact, as did the metering supply valves. We could have chosen to just install steam traps at each radiator, but the owners and I really wanted to make the system work the way it was designed. To restore it as much as possible.

There were a few radiators that hadn’t heated when the boiler was running, in fact one of those areas had some baseboard hot water heat  installed as a supplement to the heat. And I noticed that at least 2 radiators had NO steam trap or Richardson return elbow on them, which means that the return system was full of steam and steam pressure.

I did heat loss calculations on all the rooms, and it appeared that the room with the baseboard supplemental heat had a radiator that WAS big enough, so it was apparent that it just wasn’t heating.  The bedrooms were a little under- radiated which is unusual, but we decided that once we got all the heat working properly they could live with them and see how it was.  But that cold room needed to work.

The first thing I did was to go onto HeatingHelp.com and contact some of my steam heating peers and betters to see if anyone knew about the Richardson return ells No luck. Then I googled Brass balls.  You can only imagine SOME of the sites that I found, but I did finally find a manufacturer that makes them and would ship to us.

The steam pipes in the basement had some really thin, cheap insulation on them, and a lot of the hangers had been removed when the cellar was “fixed up” by a previous owner. So the pitch wasn’t exactly what it should be. Also in the basement were a bunch of walls and a nasty bathroom that the new owners wanted nothing to do with, so being more than just a heating contractor, we offered to remove all that stuff as well while removing the boiler.

After all the study and research, this is what we did:

We installed brass balls in the ells that were missing them.

We serviced all the supply valves with grease and freed them up.

We removed 2 radiators that had been added without steam traps. These areas will be heated by whatever heat goes into the remodeling part of the project.

We installed a steam trap on the return from a recessed radiator that didn’t have one. All the radiators now had Richardson ells or steam traps.

We installed a new Burnham 5 section steam boiler, using a 3 inch 2 inlet drop header to make sure the steam was slow and dry. W installed a 2 inch equalizer line and Hartford loop. We insulated all the boiler piping.

We installed a steam trap at the end of the main, and made a manifold of 3 vents on the return main to remove the air quickly from the steam main.

We removed the thin insulation from all the mains, and all the walls and the bathroom from the basement, and re-hung the mains and returns with the proper pitch. We supplied the owners with new insulation for the mains, which they wanted to install themselves.

We installed a Vaporstat in place of the Pressurettrol that came with the boiler so that he system could run on very small pressures.

I am happy to report that it all works like a charm. The system is very quiet, and it runs great on less than a pound of pressure. All the radiators heat right up, and even the room that had the baseboard has plenty of heat now that the system is working the way it should.

It’s time to do your spring cleaning! At least it will be in the next few weeks. While “washing walls and waxing floors” (does any one really still wax their floors?) floors, you should remember to clean your plumbing as well. You can use a simple cleaner such as white vinegar to do it.

In your kitchen, you can clean your dishwasher by running a load with only white vinegar and water , or you can buy cleaning products for the dishwasher to clear out the lines. This might be important for your health!

The disposal can use a cleaning. If you mix 1/4 cup of vinegar and water and run it through the disposal, it will clear out any built up grease. Then you can run a cup full of ice with not water to sharpen the teeth, add a cap of cooking oil after that and run it until it sounds smooth.

In the bathroom, you can put a dye tablet, or a little food coloring in the tank to make sure you aren’t wasting water. Just put 5 drops or so into the tank and wait an hour. If it’s leaking, the water in the bowl will get colored and the toilet will need some repair. You can save thousands of gallons of water this way.

If it’s not flushing as good as it used to, it may be because the wholes up under the rim are clogged with mineral deposits. This can be a nasty job to get clean, but it will allow the toilet to perform better. You should use something like Shaw’s Pads to remove any rings that have built up over the year in the bowl. Just make sure whatever product you use won’t hurt the finish of the toilet.

All the junk, small particles, minerals, even in some areas tiny bits of leaves, get lodged in the faucet aerators. If you’re experiencing reduced flow from a faucet, particularly if it’s from both tht hot and the cold, you might just find the aerator needs a good cleaning.

One of my customers removes her shower head once a year and soaks it overnight in vinegar to clear out the mineral deposits. If you don’t want to remove the head, or don’t have those skills, I’ve heard of hanging a plastic bag with vinegar over the head to do the same thing. This sounds a little tricky, and if you try it be careful of spilling the vinegar in your face! I’d like to know if this works, so if you co it, send me a message about your results.

In the basement, it’s a good idea to flush some of the water out of your water heater. Sediment precipitates out of the water due to it’s being heated, and it’s that sediment that eats out the lining of the water heater. Just run a few buckets of water out of the drain to help the water heater last. For those of you with tankless heaters, you should have your plumber descale the unit once a year. Why not in the spring?

I was just going to a call and drove past a large house that we had done a 2 pipe steam to hot water conversion. That house had over 25 radiators. It occurred to me that a lot of people may not know that this is even possible. If more people knew about the possibility they would consider it. Can any two pipe system be converted?  That’s a firm maybe.

One of the best things about converting a large house, and over the years we have done quite a few, is that the fuel savings can be tremendous. By using multiple boilers, a boiler staging control and boiler reset,  a very large house can be heated by one smaller boiler, running at a low temperature, during the milder months. Since the coldest weather, that is when the house is at 70F and the outside is below 10F, only occur 5 to 10% of the winter, the milder times are a huge part of the winter. During the colder times, both boilers can be running to provide the heat the house needs.

The reason that people want to convert are many. Most of the ones we’ve done already needed a new boiler, and since so many of the boilers that we see aren’t installed right,  they had already experienced years of banging pipes , spurting radiators, ridiculous fuel bills and uneven heating.  They are sick of it, and want to upgrade the system if possible.

It’s a firm maybe because there are some things to look at.

First, we have to do a heat loss and study the existing radiator sizes. Since they were designed to heat with 212F condensate,  they have to be large enough, or the house has to have had upgrades to the windows and insulation, so that they can still be functional at lower temperatures. Typically, we design forced hot water heating systems to run at 180F, so if the radiators are undersized, they will really be undersized at lower temperatures.

Next we have to look at the piping and it’s condition. In my experience, if it holds steam it’ll hold water fine, but you have to look for extra connections, such as riser drips, that are not going to be needed for the hot water. You have to watch out for wet returns that are full of sludge and scale. These can clog up your boiler and circulators and cause other problems in the system. You may have to re-pipe some areas to get the returns to work.

Last you need to look at the radiators themselves. Typically, we remove the guts from the steam trap, drill and tap a new air valve at the top of the radiator, and replace anyupack-less radiator valves that many two pipe steam systems have. They will always leak water and be a source of call backs and annoying drips.  Don’t ask me how I know this!

With all that work on the radiators, and multiple boilers and staging and reset controls, it’s not the cheapest way to replace a two pipe steam boiler, but it will provide years and years of trouble free heat when done right. I have systems that we converted well over ten years ago that are just purring along with very few troubles. And no banging pipes!

We just finished replacing a steam boiler in a three condo building.  The old boiler, which was only 9 years old, was a 12 section boiler with only a 2 inch header. There was also a return pipe that was just a little bit higher than the boiler water line.  The 12 section cracked and was leaking water and steam, but even before the crack they had been contacted by the gas company because of their excessive gas use.

When replacing a steam boiler, the boiler has to be sized by the connected load, so I carefully measured every radiator and was even able to read the manufacturer’s name on some of them.  I looked up the radiator ratings (Equivalent Direct Radiation EDR) in a few books that I have. One of them is named EDR and it’s from Dan Holohan at  www.HeatingHelp.com. If you have steam heat questions, Dan is the man with a lot of the answers. After rating the radiators, I came to the conclusion that what they needed was a 9 section boiler!  That 12 section was a 1/4 to 1/3 too large for the radiators.  One of the occupants was there when the 12 section was installed, and she told me that the installer never went upstairs to look at the radiators. So her’s what happened: The boiler was probably replaced once before the 12 section, and that guy might not have checked the radiators- he just went a bit bigger to cover himself. Then the 12 section guy just went bigger again- and so we end up with the wrong boiler with undersized piping.  This is a prescription for bad steam and wasted fuel. We’ve now fixed that.

The new 9 section boiler was installed with an insulated, 3 inch drop header, and we raised the boiler enough to keep that low return below the boiler water line, so the system runs really well and is quiet as well. I’m looking forward to their next gas bill!

We are now working very closely with Mary Regan of Wayside Kitchens on the design of our kitchen and bathroom cabinets. With the variety of cabinet vendors they carry, we’re sure to find a suitable style to fit your taste. Mary and I collaborate on the kitchen layouts. I have been working in houses all my life, plus I do most of the cooking at home,  so I have a real world idea of what works and how the work should flow in a kitchen. I also lean towards making the mechanical aspects of the kitchen work. With Mary’s knowledge of the cabinet lines, and her aesthetic sense and experience, she is able to translate my rough ideas into a beautiful finished product based on the owner’s input. Mary has an interior design degree  and over 15 years of kitchen and bath design experience.

We take the same old school care with the kitchen renovation process as I described in the bathroom remodeling blogs.  Even more importantly, we make sure that you know what to expect from each step of the process. Have you ever felt that a contractor wasn’t listening to you? Our goal is to always hear and understand what you say.

What we hear from people is that they are frustrated by talking to answering machines,  upset that the designer didn’t listen to their concerns, disappointed by the way the construction experience went, and worried that they didn’t get the quality of work and products that they really wanted. Does any of this sound familiar?

In the last installment, we had all of the in the wall,  or behind the scenes stuff completed. Now we start on hiding all the most expensive work!

In most cases, we will install blueboard, which is just sheetrock that has been designed as a base to stick a smooth coat of finish or veneer plaster to.  We do this for several reasons. One, it makes a nice smooth finish for the painter. While the painter will still probably have to do some prep work (if he’s a good painter), it’s lessened in that the veneer plaster starts out smooth. It makes a nice hard, durable finish, with very little cracking or screw head pop outs in the future. It’s a good surface.  We have an experienced plastering contractor do the veneer plastering.  The other nice thing about blueboard and plaster is that the plastering is usually done in one day. When I first started they were still doing plaster on wire mesh using a three part process, which was expensive and involved multiple trips.

As part of closing up the walls, we install cement board in the shower or bathtub areas to get them ready for tiling. This product is waterproof and is actually concrete with a mesh keeping it in board shape.  As with the plaster, we used to install what we called “mud” walls in all the wet areas, which was wire mesh, a scratch coat, a brown coat, and a finish coat with the tile set into the wet mud, and then grout.  It was a lot of work, and I don’t think there are many tile setters left  that can still do it, at least not residential ones.  The cement boards are just as waterproof and get installed a lot faster!

Next is usually tile.  Depending on the tile, it gets installed over the cement board with mastic or another cement product called thin set.  If there is a window in the bathtub area, we try to make the whole window and trim out of tile or marble to prevent future problems with rotting or paint peeling. The floors we do with cement board also, and tile. When cement board is used on the floor we make sure that the sub floor is strong enough, as cement board doesn’t have much structural strength. After the tile is all set, it get’s grouted.

To be continued……