Recent content by Mr Blint

That was what I was hoping to hear, though opinion seems divided. I haven't noticed any sewer odors or anything like that, and we've been living here for a long time. I could add an AAV to the original 1940s plumbing, locating the vertical pipe about 5' from the sink and extending it upward so...

As I said, this is original plumbing from the late 1940s. I've been thinking of installing a 1-1/2 AAV about 5' from the sink on the 1-1/2 drain pipe run. Any closer than 5' to the sink is not an option since there's stuff in the way that can't be moved. Would that alleviate any concern?

Yes, there is no vent other than the 4" waste stack that goes up and out the roof.

Our late 1940s laundry sink in the basement has a 1-1/2 inch drain pipe that runs about 8' and then drops vertically into the concrete floor; below the floor surface the sink drain pipe connects to the 4-inch main waste stack. Is that enough venting to prevent a siphoning effect empting water...

I had in mind mainly to protect the valves for the clothes washer and dishwasher, and keeping the water-hammer arresters from failing because of limescale buildup, and keeping the air release valve on the boiler from getting clogged with it. But we also have a lot of iron in the water and the...

Although the alignment of the pipes is good, my 3/4 copper + brass compression unions are leaking. A single drip every five minutes or so. Three of them have this issue. There's no visible damage on any of them. I've loosened and retightened the threads on all of them and one eventually...

It took 40 pumps per crimp on the Viega coupling and 50 pumps per crimp on a Viega ball valve, both 1/2 inch. I wasn't sure how many pumps to do and decided to stop when it felt like it really couldn't go any tighter. With the ball valve, I used a length of PVC pipe to get a little extra...

Yes, some very old copper, original to the house, circa 1948. Just some scraps from sections I'd cut out, when giving the new hydraulic tool a dry-run.

For almost all of my DIY projects in the past, I used solder and my repairs and my new work have both held up so far for 15 years without leaks. But recently I bought one of the relatively inexpensive bolt-cutter type manual crimping tools for propress-style fittings. I've done a couple dozen...

DIYer here. I want to install a Zurn backflow valve (3/4 FNPT) and need to buy a new coupling for the house side of the meter. The meter has "5/8" stamped into the bronze body on the mains side. I bought a meter coupling on eBay described so: 3/4" Lead Free Brass Water Meter coupling for 5/8 x...

I was trying to thread a 3/4 brass male NPT thread into the outflow side of a new Watts LF7R check valve, and tried several different ones, and also tried a 3/4 copper adapter, but couldn't get any of them to go very far in at all. Normally I have three threads remaining exposed but with Watts...

I am trying to replace the trap on a powder-room drain installed in our house back in the 1950s. It is a 1-1/4 American Standard popup drain with overflow. Whoever did the original install did not put enough space between the sink drain pipe and the candy-cane pipe coming up out of the floor...

Yesterday we replaced our badly leaking indirect hot water heater with a Burnham US Boiler Alliance LT, the one with the thermoplastic lining. No sacrificial anode, no corrosion issues. We live in PA, US Boiler is located in PA, and we're shopping local. The old tank had a Honeywell aquastat...

asktom wrote: I am not a big fan of instant-set style rings because you need to cut a larger hole in the subfloor and that can compromise your ability to fasten the ring to the floor because the screw hole is near the edge of the cut. If the screws don't hold then the toilet is held to the floor...

I've seen the cans of the chemical-compound lead substitutes that are used with oakum for sealing PVC in a cast iron hub. But it's hard to find out whether it is to-code here in PA, where things are very old-school. If it's to-code, it might become my plan A, because finding a short piece of 4"...