Water, Part 1: This Old Plumbing

Original post: 2/23/2010

Since we bought our house last year, water has seemed to be a recurring theme . Water coming in; water going out; water from the sky; and water from the earth. First we'll start with water coming in, i.e. supply. Our house, like many old houses, had galvanized steel pipes for the water coming in and going to sinks, tubs, toilets, etc. It probably sounded like a good idea at the time and it sure beats lead piping, but the life span of galvanized steel pipes is about forty or fifty years. The problem is that minerals and rust start to build up and near the end you'll have a 3/4" pipe with a 1/4" hole. This really affects water pressure and while our shower was tolerable, we barely got any hot water pressure in our kitchen sink. Which brings me to Exhibit 1:

Exhibit 1. This is not good. This was the pipe that went from our water heater, across the house to the chimney shaft, up to the floor framing, back to the exterior wall, and then back down to the kitchen sink on the same side as the water heater. A fifteen foot straight distance made with probably 100 feet of pipe. This piece was in the crawl space and as you can see was completely rusted through...and wet. This might have lasted another ten years or it could have burst at any moment, which could be quite inconvenient if we were out of town and the water ran for a few days at full pressure flooding our crawl space and running up an exorbitant water bill. So I replaced this section of pipe, which brings me to Exhibit 2:

Once we removed that section of pipe, I was able to break it in two just with my hands. We replaced it with a section of copper pipe and I thought that would fix the pressure problem but no. It was just the same, which meant there was another spot with a lot of corrosion or maybe it was all blocked. So we decided to have the house re-piped, and quite a difference that made. A team of guys arrived and in one day they replaced all that old pipe with brand new copper pipes, which should last as long as the house does.

The finished product. You can see the old galvanized pipes (the smaller diameter ones) that were left in place.