This morning while cleaning out the sinktrap in our upstairs bathroom I noticed that the flange on the end of the pipe jutting from the wall is cracked. What is the best way to repair this? The thing looks like this:
wall --------- | | __
Remove the part(s), take it to the hardware store or home center, and get a new one
When you say "flange" what exactly does that look like? Most intallations I've seen in the midwest have a pipe that goes into the wall that has a threaded nut on it usually chromed which has a compression washer that slides over the PVC or chromed brass pipe that exits the P trap. This is usually extra long to allow adjustment of the whole assembly. Richard
Here is a picture:
Bit hard to tell from the pic, but years ago the practice was to solder the chrome tubular trap arm into a "solder bushing". The bushing is brass and has pipe threads on the outside to screw into the 90 or TEE in the wall.
There is no good tool to get the bushing out and usually have to make a saw cut thru the side and then collapse the bushing.
Solder bushings are no longer used and a "Desanco" fitting (compression) replaces the bushing:
Well judging from the pic you can try to unscrew the first chrome looking nut from the wall. It looks like its backwards from what I'm used to. It should come off counter clockwise and be a compression washer on the 90=BA that would normally slide into the pipe that comes out of the wall. If it comes of clockwise ( and that is what it looks like) there will probably be a flange coming from he wall and the 90=BA will be threaded where it meets the pipe going into the wall. If that's the case then post a picture after you take that off. You should be able to do it with moderate persuasion from some Channel-Locs. It actually looks like there's a flange soldered into the copper? waste that goes into the wall.=20 Is this your house or a rental? Richard
It's my house for the time being.
I cut the 90 off (it was rotten in a couple of places). The horizontal pipe going to the right was soft also and had some rot on it. I removed all of that and ended up with this:
What I'm thinking of doing is getting a section of 1.25", cleaning out the stub from the wall (the inside was cleaned out since I shot this picture, I'll wipe it with some wet or dry to remove the remaining crud). I'll solder a 90 to this section of pipe, then I'll slide the other end of pipe into the outlet shown and will solder that up.
It would have been cheaper for her to buy a new contact lens, but then I'd be repairing this at another time.
Wow, how old is the house? When you scrape that pipe with a knife does it feel and look like lead? How thick.
If it is lead, you'll have to ream out the inside of the pipe to get the solder to take. The piece you insert should be female and allow you to slide another 90=BA into it and secure it with a nut and compression gasket. Also this will be like "sweating a pipe in the old fashioned way" do you have a local expert that can advise you on how to do that? You could consider stick epoxy if that outlet pipe is sound. If you're going to be in this house for a while you'll want to get a thicker walled "extension piece" to sweat into the outlet lead pipe. Otherwise you'll be doing this again in ~10 years. That thin stuff that's normally sold for drains and P traps wears out.
Aha.. I've been there. These thin brass Ps can be like paper when you go to take one apart they will just crumble in your hand. I fact you should be careful when you do this. I always squeeze the P before I take it apart. It can be worn down to the chrome plating and very sharp. The high wear point is the outside of the radius and usually is the first place it fails. Richard
The house is 1915. It's a fairly solid place, with lath walls and some huge beams under the floors along with a 4" concrete slab in the bathroom that had pipes running IN the slab not below it.
It is lead, I scraped a bit of it last night and it had that lead feel.
The epoxy sounds good, I can sweat pipes but that is a tight spot, I don't want to catch the house on fire.
If it wasn't for the black scum inside that pipe it would have leaked years ago. Pretty scary.
We're moving east in the spring to a much newer home, Raleigh here I come.
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