running water!

OK..so the title is a little misleading. We already had running water in the place as long as you consider an old fashioned hand pump in the kitchen area as running water. It was connected to the well via a pipe..and the septic is hooked up so it all went to the right place..it just needed some fine tuning. We hired a plumber to come in and do the work..and wire the pump. Mike was his name and he came in to do the work..he was going to be: running a pex line to the tub, connecting pex for the toilet, installing a outlet for the tub, hooking up the sink in the kitchen and bathroom, wiring the jet pump.

We chose pex due to it being the easiest to work with and if we wanted to change things in the future we could do it ourselves. ( plus after my very frustrating copper pipe experience in the old place I did not want to think of it again!) I was actually amazed at how quick the pex install went. Drill some holes in the studs, run the line and use a special adapter and voila, the lines were done. After the lines we roughly run we got to the job of putting in an outlet for the tub..since the floor was rough we decided to saw a hole in the floor so we could work and replace it when we were done. This was the first time I had cut into the floor and was amazed that underneath the floor was around 2 inches of styrofoam for insulation followed by another floor. I had never seen anyone do this sort of plumbing..and once again I was amazed at how quick the work went. We had to remove the toilet which was planned anyway since it was originally installed diagonally in the bathroom..once that was up Mike had the hole cut and the tub outlet installed in 1/2 hour…it took twice as long to fit a new piece of wood for the floor. Especially considering the fact that A* had to go into town to buy wood for it. After we got the floor back in Mike connected the pex to the tub, sink and kitchen sink..and we also had Mike do a late addition..an outside faucet below the sink. That only left the jet pump.

Originally I through around the idea of going with a 12v pump right out of the gate..but after some investigation into prices and considering the fact that I had nothing to power a 12v pump with we settled on a 1/2hp jet pump..not really efficient but it would do the job for our dug well. So Mike set to it with some copper pipe extensions, solder and the ends of the pex lines. He had way more patience than me but in an hour he had it all done, wired it up to the electrical lines then connected the in-pipe. So, we were at the moment of truth..would the water run? A* fired up the generator and Mike showed us how to prime the pump and we flipped the power on inside..With a suprising amount of noise the pump roared to life. It took 10 seconds or so for the pressure tank to fill but then the water in the kitchn started to flow. We went into the washroom and the toilet was filling up..and after testing the sink and tub everyhing was working! We took a huge step forward today..no more exausting minutes hand pumping water into the sink to do dishes..now we only have to turn on the generator and we have water! No hot water yet but at least the lines are run so whenever we have the ability to install hot water we can!

sure it needs cleaning..but it provides water now!

ok..so we have running water now.

you can see where we had to cut out the floor to get to the tub drainage pipe.

the clawfoot tub