Not much worse than fixing old plumbing

[Tom King]

Especially old, stupid stuff.

This is the water line going into our rental house.  They had put in a main cutoff valve, and then covered it with two feet of dirt.

It sounded like it was leaking in the wall of a 1/2 bath, so I took the wall cabinet down, cut a hole in the sheetrock, and couldn't find any sign of a leak with the inspection camera.

Went outside, and started digging.   Found the pipe, and cut the water back on.  Could hear a jet, and water bubbled up.  Cut the water off, and waited until another day (today) to dig it up.

Not only had they buried the cutoff valve, but used a galvanized nipple to adapt the valve to 1" copper.

I had found another leak last week, but the meter was still spinning, so I searched, and found this.  I did put in a nice ball valve main cutoff during that first repair.

It was more of a job than these pictures indicate, but the meter doesn't budge now, when all is shut off in the house.

No one had a 1" copper 1" female adapter, but I was able to take the old one off, clean it up, and reuse it.

 

[Mark J]

Tom, it looks like you removed the valve, too.  Did it get moved to somewhere else, like inside the house?

[Tom King]

I had installed a valve, in a ground box, during the first repair, farther upstream in the supply line.  I didn't think that house had one, and I had been cutting the water off at the meter.  There is no need for one there, especially under 2' of dirt.  I'm going to fill around the new lines with sand.

[Tpt life]

Speaking of old stupid stuff, 12 22.5° fittings laid dead level in a shepherds hook configuration. I greatly simplified and sloped this three years ago. I think the plumber set this with whatever was in the truck that day. 

[Tom King]

Old electrical is a close second. 

Working on some issues in our rental house.  It was a converted agricultural building.  The roof is site built trusses, out of rough cut lumber.  The individual pieces are Huge, and leave little room to get through.  There are a bunch of really old wires not used for anything, and the newer stuff is a messy jumble.

The garage doors had extension cords plugged into wall outlets in the garage to power them.  There are receptacles in the ceiling near the openers.  My tester, that doesn't read voltage, but just has two lights, said they were okay, but they won't operate the openers.  I plugged the Shop Vac into one.  When I flipped the vac switch on, one bank of the old flourescent ceiling lights came on, but the vac didn't start...............

Not a fun job coming up today.

[Chestnut]

Reminds me of working on my old house. That house was probably new compared to what you see though at only 100 years old.

[Tom King]

Older 20th Century ones are worse than the historic ones.  This one was built mid 20th Century as an agricultural building, and remodeled into a house in the early '70's.

Looks like they wired the ceiling receptacles into a switch leg, with no neutral.  That was fairly common when all the ceiling boxes were wired with shared neutrals, and the switch leg just broke the hot.  Those are the impossible ones to have to change to Arc Fault.  Fortunately, I'm not having to do that-no permit pulled for stuff in the house.

I never liked doing that.  I like it when you open up and old box, and the white wire is neutral, with the black hot.  I don't like having a white hot wire.

[Tom King]

Turned out to be an easy fix.  I just had to move one wire from one junction box, into another.

Now another simple problem.  Only one remote would work, out of four, in spite of changing batteries.  I programmed both garage door openers to work off of that one remote.  For now, until the replacement remote controllers come, they both go up, and down together.

[sisiniaasthma]

OMG. I know this kind of pain. I had to repair the underground water supply system of our former house. We had a strong water leak, which caused the house to tilt to one side, and sinkholes began to appear in the courtyard. So I wanted to check on the pipes. I wasn't surprised by the jet of water gushing up from a hole in a rusty pipe. The house was about 20 years old when we settled there (we rented this house). The owner of the house refused to fix it himself. We found an anixusa gate valve that helped fix the pipe. I didn't want to fix the full water system for this jerk at my own expense. A month later, we moved out. I talked to the new residents of that house. And they said the valve I bought still keeps the water in good condition. I'm surprised.