Recent content by sanrico

Thank you for responding. Where it is set now (the picture), I just checked with a food thermometer and the water coming out of my kitchen tap was 115 degrees. I imagine the water cools a bit in the pipes. Does that reading sound right?

Hi everyone, I have a Bradford White Defender 50 gallon water heater. I think it's about 15 years old. I have always set the thermostat to the red notch, but in the past few weeks, our hot water hasn't been as hot as normal. Showers felt lukewarm and when washing dishes, the water wouldn't get...

Hello all, I am installing a water softener. It has the valve pictured below, with 3/4" female threaded in/outs. I have 3/4" threaded Sharkbite adapters to go into it, also pictured below. I plan on using teflon tape (the regular stuff from Lowe's). I've been searching the web and am getting...

Strike this question. It was a tight fit, but I got everything in there. Would it be okay to use a 22-degree street elbow coming out of the horizontal orifice of the sanitary tee? That space is so tight with copper in front and in back of it, this elbow would give me the slight horizontal angle...

Thank you so much for your quick response. I am glad I can use the tee I bought. The one thing still bugging me is that the fat part of the tee that connects to the horizontal pipe is right up against that copper pipe behind it. It wants to push the tee so that I don't have a straight fit to the...

Hello, In my bathroom, there was a double-sink vanity that we remodeled to just have one sink. Picture 1 below is the backside of the wall where the remaining sink is mounted, with the original plumbing. I removed the ABS cross-point pictured below in order to replace the leaking whole-house...

Thank you both for your quick replies. I really do appreciate your knowledge and willingness to help. This forum has been a great help to me over the years. I have one more question. Don, you said: Would a different type of air filter on the cold return (thanks LLigetfa for that...

Hi all, I have a 2,000 square-foot ranch-style home in a dry climate (New Mexico). The furnace is gas (Bryant Plus 90) and located in the garage. There are two fresh-air returns: one in the hallway about 30 feet from the furnace, and one in the living room just on the other side of the wall...

Hi all, We recently had our second bathroom redone and this time, we went with a contractor. When he was done and we were going over his (sometimes sloppy) work, I noticed the drain for the vanity sink and the tub were both leaking. I noticed he used rubber "pipes" with hose clamps and I found...

Well, I went back to Home Depot and bought another toilet. Same model. I took the tank from the 2nd toilet and put it on my base and presto...perfectly level. I am guessing that the bracket on the first toilet was bent somehow in shipping. The bracket is a great idea since the bolts no longer...

I must have gotten a lemon. The tank is so off-level that loosening one bolt to level it would compromise the integrity of the gasket quite badly. I just got off the phone with Kohler Customer Service (wait time: 12 minutes), who told me "we don't know without looking at it." I told them about...

Yessir, I am sure. It was a sealed box. Here are some pictures. The Kohler logo: The bottom of the tank that shows the two bolts. They don't go through the tank itself. They are affixed to a bracket mounted to the tank. I've never seen this before. It says to tighten the bolts until the tabs...

Hello again everyone, I'm finally at the last stages of installing the toilet in our new bathroom and have run into yet another problem that has me scratching my head. I'm installing a Kohler Wellworth toilet. The base is perfectly level. However, when I started installing the tank, I...

I did use a drill to thread the Tapcon, but not the DeWalt. I used a very low-power Black and Decker. But you are right. It snapped that head off in seconds. You are also right that the DeWalt is rattling my soul. The Tapcon drill bit also seems to have become dull after drilling two holes...

I thought I had finished the hard part of a toilet replacement when I removed the old closet flange piece by piece with a chisel, but I was wrong. I used PVC cement to replace the flange with a perfect fit. Now I'm trying to secure the flange to the floor and it's driving me nuts. I am using a...