Galvanized pipe too short for tub spout

[micky]

Talk to someone at a plumbing supply store. They all sell to non-plumbers, and he may have something no one here has thought of.

And he'll have the adapter too.

[Wayne Boatwright]

On Mon 12 Jun 2017 10:26:04a, told us...

To the OP... Much ado about next to nothing. You've already stated that the house is in such disrepair, then what's one more thing that a buyer could fix themselves? You've already said that the property isn't worth much, and that your mother won't actually benefit from the profit because it will be handed over for the assisted care. If it were my dump to mess with, I wouldn't do anything except cut down the weeds. How much time have you already spent worrying about and fiddling with this stupid faucet, when you could actually do something about something else, like the weeds. Zeeesh! Find a buyer who actually wants a fixer upper and projects to do, and sell it cheap!

[DerbyDad03]

It's not an actual rule, but a fairly common occurrence:

The more money she has for self-funding her care, the better a place she may be able to move into. Once she's there, she won't get kicked out once the Medicaid benefits kick in.

Underselling the house may mean lower quality care for mom.

[HerHusband]

We've already mowed the weeds down, propped up the falling fence, fixed a leaking faucet, installed new locks, and a host of other small improvements. We enjoy doing home improvements so we've had fun fixing the little things even if it doesn't make any difference in the selling price. These small improvements don't cost much and I enjoy the challenge of trying to solve odd problems like the tub spout.

Yes, we need to sell the house, and there are bigger projects we won't have the time or money to get to. But why not fix the small things we can. We are spending a fair amount of time at the house, so we benefit from the small improvements we've done.

Anthony

[Wayne Boatwright]

On Mon 12 Jun 2017 09:01:30p, HerHusband told us...

I'm sure that's fine if you take some pleasure and satisfaction of doing it. Personally I wouldn't want the challenges.

When we moved into our current home that was built in the 1950s, we personally did a lot of electrical and plumbing work, painting, flooring, etc. However, this is our permanent home where I expect to live for a good many years, and I enjoyed putting things right.

Having said that, over the years since we initially did all that, I have had other people come in to do repairs, replacements, etc. I'm getting too old to be bothered. :-)

Good luck with everything!

[HerHusband]

Unfortunately, mom's house is in a rural and remote little town in the desert. I'm not expecting a quick sale considering the area it is in. Who knows, maybe I'll be surprised.

We can't sell it till mom gets moved and we know what to do with her belongings anyway. It's cheaper to leave it all in the house than to rent a storage unit.

Anthony

[Ed Pawlowski]

Seems silly to pay to store things that she will probably never need or use again. Better to have a one time sale or give away. When we sold my mother's house we had someone come in, empty everything, sell it at a flea market. We got a few bucks when stuff was sold.

[clare]

My kid brother lives in a small town in that remote portion of North Dakota known as Saskatchewan. He owns the first property outside town on the main road, and the property next to him came up for sale about

2 years ago. It shares his driveway. The asking price, with a 2 year old roof, wiring, and plumbing, including appliances less than 5 years old and a 2 year old lawn tractor was $5000 Canadian. He said he just KNEW what kind of neighbours he'd get for $5000, so he bought it. The seller had not managed to sell his late seventies Lincoln Town Car by the time he left town, so he signed it over as part of the deal.

Perfectly liveable little house, with no plumbing or electrical issues, and a good roof. You need to truck in your water, and pump out the sewage (no town sewers, and no weeping beds allowed - and gawdawful water - but only $5K A few miles up the road, where you CAN put in a septic tank, and the water is still terrible, the property would have been worth about 4X as much. Get up into Yorkton it would be about $60,000 - $120,000. 30 km south in Mellvile, about $35000

[HerHusband]

We plan to have a yard sale for her remaining items once we know what she'll be able to use in her assisted living apartment. We also want to be sure she is going to stay in the assisted living before we get rid of her things. She says she's fine with it now, but I'll give it a few weeks to be sure. :)

I would much rather sell as much as we can than to have to haul it all back home with us.

Anthony

[HerHusband]

Well, I finally got back over to mom's house but things didn't quite go as planned... :)

I received the adapter fitting you gave me the link to:

I threaded it on the existing stub out, but it still stuck out about a

1/4" too far from the wall. No worries, I bought a trim ring too, so I stuck that to the shower wall with some plumbers putty and starting screwing on the tub spout (hand pressure only). It was all going so well until I was about 1/8" from seating the spout. That's when the pipe inside the wall broke loose! Dang.

So, I removed the tub spout and fitting. Couldn't get the stub to come out through the hole in the shower surround, so I let it drop inside the wall. I looked inside with a flashlight and could see the elbow that was soldered to the pipe slipped off the end of the pipe. Bad solder joint. Grr...

I did some measuring to see what was on the back side of the wall, then used a long screwdriver to make an exploratory hole into the adjacent room. Naturally, it was right behind the toilet (not the shower as I originally thought).

I removed the toilet tank, and cut a small 6"x8" access hole so I could get inside the wall.

Whoever the "professional plumber" was who installed this did a terrible job. Not only was the solder joint bad, but they did not anchor the drop ear elbow. They had simply hammered one of the ears into the side of a stud.

Fixing this will be tricky since the pipe runs right alongside a stud. There's certainly no room to get in there with a torch next to the stud and plastic tub surround, even with a heat shield.

I'm not crazy about sharkbite fittings, but it seems like the most workable solution in this situation. Unfortunately, I will need to cut the pipe back to get clean pipe. I'm not sure how I'm going to get in there to cut the pipe since it's right next to the stud.

Assuming I can get the pipe fixed, I need to figure out how to secure the new drop ear elbow from the back side.

Sheesh, this was suppose to be such a simple repair. I'm about ready to say screw it and let the next homeowner deal with it, but it has become something of a challenge now. I'm determined to fix it! :)

Yeah, the next homeowner will probably come in and gut everything, ripping out my proud new work, but I'll have peace of mind. :)

Anthony

[trader_4]

Sorry to hear that. It's the bad scenario we all agreed can easily happen when you start trying to fix old plumbing that you have no or limited access to. Given that this is a fixer upper in need of a lot of repairs, I would not hesitate to use sharkbite if it makes things easier. Good chance it's all going to be ripped out soon anyway.

[HerHusband]

All I wanted to do was replace the tub spout... :)

I've had a lot of experience with old plumbing at my in-laws house (galvanized pipe, even worse). I've learned nothing is easy when it comes to old plumbing.

Access is going to be the biggest problem.

I won't be able to get back to mom's house for a few days.

Anthony

[trader_4]

I just went through a similar evaluation with my shower. It has 25 year old Hans Grohe faucets. The shower volume had gone down gradually, getting really noticeable the last year or so. I had cleaned the existing shower head, no change. Recently I bought a new dual head shower contraption, where you can use one or the other or both heads at the same time. No change. I then realized that the water flow out of the pipe was low. So, what to do? I considered taking the valves apart, but these fancy Grohe handles do not use screws, they just press fit on. I figured after all those years, they were not likely to come off easily, if at all, and there is no way to even pull on them, ie you can't get a puller type thing on them, etc. And the last thing I needed was to have to put in new ones, because these still look and work fine, other than the volume issue.

So, I decided to try blowing it out with the air compressor. I rigged up a fitting, blew air through the shower pipe and out the tub and sink fixtures. And voila, I'd say the volume easily doubled. And the new shower heads now work fine, the flow can support both of them. I got lucky.

[clare]

When you are finished patching the pipes together, close the new access hole, open another one a few inches higher, and pour the space between the studs full of quick drying concrete. That will handle anchoring the drop ear elbow - - - -