ABS Everywhere (Day 161 of 273)

Its time for a little tech talk for my geochemist friends out there (listen up Michele Tuttle).
ABS—Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) ((C₈H₈· C₄H₆·C₃H₃N)_n) is a common thermoplastic used to make light, rigid, molded products such as low-pressure piping (http://www.ppfahome.org/abs/absgeneral.html). This is the black tubing and fittings that you'll see at Home Depot, etc. Comes in 4 common sizes (inside diameters): 1.5", 2", 3", and 4". I've used all but the 4", which isn't common for houses. However, don't be fooled about the pipe diameters. 1.5" really is 1.9" outside diameter (OD), which is the dimension you'll need to drill most of the holes through your studs. Likewise, 2" pipe is 2.375" OD and 3" pipe is 3.5" OD. This is especially important when you are buying hole saws (bits), such as the Big Hawg Hole Saw (Milwaukee).

ABS pipe and fittings are bonded together by means of chemical fusion. Solvents contained in the cement soften and dissolve the surfaces to be joined. Once the pipe and fitting are assembled, a chemical weld occurs. This weld strengthens over time as the solvents evaporate. My experience is that you have 30 seconds max to move or realign glued up pipe. By the end of the day you'll have black, cement-covered hands. It you screwed up, get out the saw and cut away. The up side is that ABS pipe is cheap and easy to cut with a chop saw. The first photo is of a special musical instrument that I created which attaches to the toilet in the guest bath. Good tunes!

So far I've used about 250 ft of 1.5" pipe, 120 ft of 2" pipe, 70 ft of 3" pipe, and a gaggle of fittings. Most of the vent piping is done as is the waste piping above the floor. I'm leaving the fun part for last, the waste piping below the floor, which means in the crawl space. This will be mainly 3" (main line) and 2" pipe. The key thing here is to maintain an uniform grade of 1/4" per foot on the pipe, as you all well know from previous postings to this blog. So the pipe either has to go within the floor joists, or more commonly has to be hung below the joists.


On Friday, I called Bob Brown, my plumbing adviser. Nice guy, stops by to give me the OK on my work. I had laid out all the piping to be installed on the floor, and some assemblies that were glued up but not hung yet (this was a mistake). I screwed up on several counts. My biggest mistake was using an occasional vent part for drainage. The vent elbows and T's have sharp bends, but since they only convey gas there's nothing to get hung up on. Conversely, the drainage parts have medium radius curves (elbows and sanitary Ts) for vertical drops and long-sweep curves for horizontal turns. Herein lie my problems. Looks like I'll be cutting out some glued up ABS and substituting the correct fitting.

Another problem was caused by my failure to discriminate between sinks: vanity (i.e., toy sinks) and kitchen sinks (the real thing). Kitchen sinks get all sorts of things down their drains, and thus require 2" piping. Vanities carry soap and water, so they only need 1.5" piping. The only sink I'd actually assembled was the one in the pantry. No big deal, but I need to cut out the offending parts and drill a larger hole down through the floor. More importantly, Bob's checking kept me from screwing up the three other real sinks in the house: the kitchen and prep sinks and the garage sink. If I'd glued up these in 1.5" pipe and fittings, I probably would have waisted a days labor and $100 in parts.

Now that I'm mastering the art of solid plastic piping (ABS), I may move onto PVC and potato guns. I figure if I get some nice big cylindrical Idaho russets and 10" of 3" PVC, I can probably lob a spud onto the Navy ships parked out in Townsend Bay. How does that sound "Sailboat."

Cooking with propane (Day 155 of 273)

After countless hours of internet research, showroom visits, cooking demos, and endless blogging, Nancy—aka Kitchen Connosisseur Extraordinaire—ordered our appliance package on Sunday. We had dropped Tom off at the airport and went into Seattle to finish this little detail.

Over the years, we'd been to all the major appliance dealers in the Seattle area. Now, we're not talking Kenmore or GE here, but a little higher up the chef's food chain. Wolf and Viking were vying for her attention, but I'd hear occasional mention of Blue Star, Electrolux, DCS, and Fisher Paykel at times. Let me tell you, this girl should qualify for a Masters degree in PA (professional appliances). Now its time to pay for her graduate work.

We'd had estimates on our various packages from Albert Lee, Nielsons, CrossRoads, and many others in the Seattle area. What broke the log jam was a visit to the Seattle Home Show in February. All the big dogs were there, but few were dealing. Go figure—worst economy in 75 years, people out of work, and home construction/sales in the toilet. You think you could get a $100 off a several thousand dollar appliance from Wolf, Sub Zero, or Viking. Nope, these manufacturers have entered into the little shell game known as protected MSRP (manufacturers suggested retail price). Surely, some dealer would cut us a deal—nope. If someone in town starts cutting prices on the protected "upper" appliance lines, the distributors will cut them off (much akin to losing your ticket on the Gravy Train).

Anyway, we talked to a single-store company known as Fredericks Appliance Center in Redmond, which is best known as the home of Bill Gates little company. They've got an unassuming store front, but lots of good products. Their rent is low and they don't advertise much, so they reportedly have a lower overhead than the big dogs. Well deal they did. They protected the prices on Nancy's beloved 36" Wolf rangetop and 30" double ovens, but cut the fat off the Kitchen Aid french-door refrigerator, Best hood and blower, Bosch dishwasher, and Whirlpool Duet Sport washer and dryer. In addition, we qualified for a $300 discount on the Wolf appliances (a rare factory incentive), got a $100 gift certificate from the store (which we used right then and there), and they threw in a $150 microwave (for the pantry) and a $1000(?) full-size wine refrigerator (Haier, a Chinese brand, probably cost $300 in bulk). Nevertheless, before the rebates and freebies they had beat the big dogs by a pile of $$. So we got out the plastic and made the deal happen. They'll hold the appliances until the end of July, deliver the package to PT for $125 (RT = 150 miles and 2 ferry rides), and start the warranties at the time we occupy the home (a little know secret in the industry).

So after years of research and countless notes, quotes and dotes, we've got our appliances ordered. Next up is the kitchen cabinets, which will come from the Kitchen and Bath Store (Shelly Little) in Port Townsend. She needs all the kitchen appliance specs to lay out the cabinets in CAD, so now she has them and we've made a deposit, which officially starts the process. We need the cabinets in mid July and they take 5-6 weeks to build, so we've got a couple month buffer which I'm sure will evaporate like sweat off a chili-pickers back.

On to the plumbing (Day 146 of 273)

Yeap, things have really slowed down now that we're the only ones working on the house. Sprinkle in two weeks of work on geology and a trip to Idaho Falls, and its hard to see much progress. However, we've finished the Tyvek, put the water shield (Grace Vycor) on the remaining windows, swept and vacuumed numerous times and cleaned up the remaining debris around the house. I'm sure we could get an award for cleanest house under construction in Port Townsend.

I started on the vent lines for the waste part of the plumbing. The vent lines go up from each fixture (sink, tub, shower, and toilet), get linked together and daylight through the roof. Not rocket science, but new enough for me that I'm only making glacial speed in terms of progress. Finished the master bath this afternoon and Bob (Snowboard) Brown came by to check on me (I call, he bills at $70/hr to look, fix, or advise). I don't call often. I had it all right except an upside down sanitary tee. Now you ask, just what the hell is a sanitary tee (femine health product, golf product for the germophobic golfer, etc). Well its a pipe that makes a T intersection, but sweeps to one side or the other so that the little turds or hairballs slide through and don't get lodged there, hence the term "sanitary." Don't fool yourself, there's nothing sanitary about a waste system.

This weekend I'll take a whack at the upstairs waste lines, which involve 4 devices: Shower (1.5" line), sink (1.5" line), bath tub (1.5" line), and toilet (3" line). The downstream path is Sink joins the Toilet line (main line). That line goes under the floor within joist space, then turns and dives down to the soffit in the family room. After about 10 ft it is joined by the secondary (feed) line which starts at the shower and joins the bath tub. After waste is collected from these four devices into the master (3") line, it goes about 5 ft then dives straight down (call this Mr. Twister's Turd Ride) past the first floor and into the crawl space. From there it goes 25 ft S at 1/4" per foot (the magical drop rate, see Day 26 blog) and exits the house, hopefully. If your karma is correctly adjusted, all will function well. However I wonder about the Coriolis Effect (see Wikipedia) and whether waste turns right better than left in the northern hemisphere. None of our lines go North, and most go South, so only time will tell. Perhaps one of my mechanically oriented colleagues (like Yogi) can shed some light on this problem.

After all the vent lines are complete, I'll concentrate on the real waste lines, starting from top to bottom. Maintaining a proper grade is the key point, plus making sure you use a long sweep (radius) junction when waste is entering one line from another. Also, two 45° bends are better than one 90° bend; less chance of a chunky bit hanging up.

When all the vent and waste lines are finished (end of March?) well cap all the open lines and pressure test the system by filling it with water through the uppermost vent (second story roof). This will be a low pressure test, but any leaks will become quickly apparent. If so, out comes the pipe saw, new fittings, and cement. The good thing about ABS pipe is its easy to install and rip out, and relatively cheap, so there is no reason to get your undies in a knot over this stuff.

After we clear the pressure test well go on to the domestic water supply, which will be much like the PEX work I did in January. I bought the magical PEX expansion tool so its just a simple matter of mapping out the supply line routes, drilling a couple hundred holes and pulling the pipe: red for hot and blue for cold. More on this later. I'm off to Los Alamos National Laboratory to make sure the place doesn't leak plutonium like a sieve in the next big earthquake on the Parajito fault zone.

Halftime: House 14, Machette 7 (Day 136 of 273)

Today is Saturday, March 6th — Day 136, one-half the way through our allowed 273 days to build the Kala Point house. I suspect we're 1/3 done, so we're behind by about one month. So be it. Some things that get hired out, like the drywall and insulation will go fast (each in about a week), so we might be able to catch up a bit and still move into the house in August. If not, we'll try to stay in the rental house on a month to month basis, and pay for labor we planned to contribute (so called sweat equity). Nancy has decided on the cabinet supplier (Kitchen and Bath Shop, Port Townsend; Shelly Little--a neighbor) so they took measurements this week and she'll work up the final order for the kitchen cabinets and island. We bought a vanity, sink, and faucet for the guest bath from them, which was a demo unit and priced right. Just need to store it for 6 months, but one less decision to make in the long run.

The construction business is still slowing down up here. The Ellis guys are lined up for two houses in advance, and Gary says he'll stay busy through the summer, but then ?? who knows. Carl's laid off a few more people, and Crystal our favorite lumber-yard girl, left for a better job down in the ship yards. She had a liking for wooden boats so this will be a better place for her, all 110# dripping wet. Good luck Crystal. If Melissa or Terry leaves were in deep yogurt.