Winter Repairs are underway

This Winter one of our sillcocks (through wall hose faucet) froze and ruptured. Apparently insulating the soffit was a bad idea for the pipe, but a good idea for stopping a cold draft. Without insulation soffit space was kept above freezing, but it made the first floor cold and drafty. With it insulated the space close to the outside wall actually got to freezing temperatures.

While saving on excessive heating, it resulted in a the poorly installed hose bib freezing and rupturing because it didn't drain out, and there was no shutoff valve between it and the water main. We got lucky in that it ruptured between the valve seal and the wall, and not between the valve and the water main.

The old sillcock is now replaced by a 16 inch, 1/4 turn, freezeless, anti-siphon sillcock and PEX piping. After pulling the ruptured sillcock out it would appear that this was not the first time that this sillcock had frozen as the rupture had a solder repaired split that blew out.

So this now starts the organized PEX replacement of the jumbled mess of copper piping from multiple remodeling jobs done before us.

Here is the PEX manafold with a temporary "U" installed until I can connect in the hot water heater.

The old ruptured sillcock was connected below the first shutoff valve in the blue circle. I don't know what the plumber was thinking installing a line subject to freezing without included a shutoff valve on it. Had the sillcock ruptured behind the seal, we would have had to turn off the water to the whole house until it could have been repaired in the dead of winter.  Also in the blue circle is where the new PEX connects back to the whole house. This shutoff valve feeds everything except the hot water heater.

The red circle is a the system drain faucet. Guess what, it doesn't work at all. More precisely it doesn't open at all. The handle turns and it feels like the valve gate is moving. Unfortunately is appears that the galvanized pipe fittings in that jog have built up enough scale to seal off that branch of the 'T'-fitting with the faucet.

Next plumbing tasks:

• Replace the other sillcock with a leaking handle (leaks only when on)
• Connect the Hot Water heater to the manifold replacing the red 'U'
• Cut out about 15 feet of dead end copper tubing
• Install a new earth ground. Pretty sure my copper pipes were never connected to the earth unless that get grounded through the hot water heater

Aside from the upfront cost of the PEX crimping tools and the manifold block these updates are pretty straight forward and they are much quicker and easier than repairing the system with more copper. 

If you are in a position to be able to work on your own plumbing and questioning if you can do it yourself the answer is probably yes. If you can change a faucet or toilet, you can work with PEX.  If I had to do this with copper, the tight quarters and electric lines would have made the repairs very difficult or impossible to solder in place.