Need quick advice for fixing galvanized horizontal hot water pipe in crawlspace (first time)

Elmo-

Don't worry about the goop .....if it's not leaking now it probably will be fine.

I didnt quite follow your description....at some point did you use a

3/4" galvanized union?

cheers Bob

PS Owning a house built in 1930 (since 1979), I've gone through most of what you'll be going through. I fixed one leak in 1979 and never had another. Maybe 1930 galvanized was better than 1950? Who knows.

A trick to loosening old thread joints....tighten them just a tiny bit, just until you get relative motion. A trick I learned in 1980 (cost me $500 worth of pro-plumber work) , works every time!

Reply to
DD_BobK
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OP should consider turning main water valve off when not home... To prevent a flood if a line breaks completely. That happened to a friend of mine, he came home to a foot of water in his basement, stuff on floor floated and blocked basement floor drain.

he was lucky he has a nice shop in his basement and it all could of been underwater. he had come home early that day ill......

so if a flood can do damage turn water off.

hope OP gets a good job soon!

Reply to
hallerb

Whew!

Yes.

I cut the pipe at the bad spot and removed about 25 feet of pipe. I ended up with a gap of about 22 feet in one direction and then about 3 feet at 90 degrees (and up about 4 inches higher so it was two more elbows and a nipple).

All that was easy.

The hard part was UNSCREWING the pipes from the two ends and then joining them at the 20-foot mark.

The single-piece galvanized union connecting the two ten-foot pipes was easy. The three-piece galvanized union which was the last piece that I put in was the one that kept leaking until I finally took it apart for the last time and gooped it up with the pipe thread sealant.

I ended up replacing about 25 feet because of the condition of the pipes.

|----10 feet ----||----10 feet----|{}|---2 feet---+ | 3 feet | | _

Reply to
Elmo

The picture got messed up. It was supposed to show what it looked like. All parts are 3/4" galvanized steel.

10 feet + 1-piece union + ten feet + 3-piece union + 2 feet + 90-degree-elbow + 2-inch-nipple + 90-degree-elbow + 3 feet.

The job was easy.

The hardest part was removing the old pipe (I crushed the first one before it finally came out with a 3-foot-long aluminum pipe wrench).

The most frustrating part was the 3-piece-union kept leaking. So I had to take it out multiple times and put it back. It was a swimming pool in that crawl space. I was amazed how much water was in the pipes, even after I bled them. The entire run is about 50 feet long so water poured out of both sides of the union even with the showers on and the faucets all turned on until they went dry on top.

But I learned they were soaking wet on the bottom.

Finally, around midnight, I was able to tighten all the parts.

Another problem was measuring. I learned that it's best to assemble everything EXCEPT the final piece. Then measure the final piece and have home depot cut it and thread it.

I first tried measuring the whole thing but came up an inch too short for the 2-foot final piece. Dunno what happened. I thought I had meausred twice but I ended up with a short pipe. Had to go back to Home Depot just before the 9pm closing to get that last piece.

Also, I should have bought TWO 3-piece unions because I would have swapped them out instead of trying to make the one I had not leak. Lesson learned!

Actually LOTS of lessons learned.

- Buy a good drop light

- Use a looooooong aluminum pipe wrench

- Use #2 thread sealant (not #5)

- Buy more than what you need (unions)

- Measure the last gap at the end and have pipe cut & threaded to size

Also, I should have ADDED a shutoff down below! I only thought of that as I was crawling back up on the carpet above, full of mud and dust, time after time to shut off the water supply from outside the house.

If I had thought to put in a brass valve down below, I chould have shut off the water from below w/o having to get out of the house twice for each test (once to turn it off and once to turn it on). My back is sore from all the crawling. After a while, I had my own slithering style, with tools on my belly as I moved head first toward the opening of the crawl space in the bedroom closet.

Whew!

But it felt good, at midnight, to have it all working again! Thanks for all your help and advice. I'm STILL learning (even after the job is finished) from you guys!

Reply to
Elmo

maybe the phone line protector ground? (in/on garage)

-l

Reply to
larry

I just can't EVEN imagine WHY you would go to all that problem when a pex fix would have taken 1/2 hour at most.

Reply to
Steve Barker

Two reasons, neither of them real good reasons.

  1. I really don't understand the pex stuff. Copper I understand (but I couldn't find a lead-free California dialectric union). Galvanized 1:1 replacement I (finally) understood. But, I never did understand the PEX stuff.
  2. When I asked the Home Depot plumbing guy about PEX pipe, he said he only had the fittings, and not the pipe. He didn't seem to understand it all that much himself. When I asked him what "most people do", he said they replace galvanized with galvanized.

So I did. I really should look up this PEX stuff so as to see what else I could have done.

Reply to
Elmo

Actually, Home Depot solves this problem. It takes two trips.

For trip 1 you buy almost everything you need and then you put it all together, including the 3-piece union and then measure the gap.

In my case, the gap, say it's 25 1/4 inches. You add 1/2 inch to each side so you need a 26 1/4 inch threaded pipe.

Trip 2, back at Home Depot you buy a 10-foot 3/4-inch galvanized pipe and they cut it to 26 1/4 inches and thread it for you on a big oily threading machine in the plumbing aisle.

Theoretically you pop that threaded pipe in and pop on the remaining 2 pieces of the 3-piece union and you're done.

Mine leaked at the 3-piece union so I wasn't done for a long time.

I wonder. How long SHOULD this have taken? For me, all that crawling in the crawl space, shutting off and turning on water, running out to get longer and longer pipe wrenches, multiple trips to Lowes and Home Depot to find that none of them have lead-free dialectric unions, etc., took over 12 hours to fix that one leaky pipe.

How long SHOULD it have taken to fix the leak and what would plumber have charged?

Reply to
Elmo

And a large cost to either buy or rent the tool required for the job.

Harry K

Reply to
Harry K

I understand it but I find it is easier to uses PVC/CPVC instead. Can of glue, hacksaw and a handful of cheap fittings will fix almost any problem. The only advantage I see to PEX is it's flexible. Drawback is the cost of the tool to use it.

Harry K

Reply to
Harry K

Home depot here sells some pretty cheap PEX tools, 40 bucks gets the job done. Although 300 bucks gets you the deluxe version

Reply to
hallerb

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