Snap, crackle, pop goes the 4" cast iron pipe

So I decided that I didn't want to have a nasty old piece of rusty cast iron sticking through my beautiful new metal roof. (This may seem bizarre, and it probably is, but when I get an urge to tear something apart, there's nothing really to stop me.)

I thought to myself: "Hey, you cut through that 2" cast iron pipe in about 15 minutes, so it should only take an hour to cut through a 4" pipe." And then I wondered why I thought the word "only," and set out to find a better solution.

This is the answer:

A snap chain cutter. It's a giant, heavy tool whose sole purpose is to clamp down really hard on a pipe with a very thick chain that has circular carbide teeth contained in it. And you know what? It works really well.

I hear tell of something similar with a ratchet action, which would probably be even better. The snap chain cutter required two people, and I think it's not really designed for use on pipes that are vertical, because one of the levers has a flat spot on it, probably for putting a foot on top of while it's on the ground. Still, Jacob helped me make 3 cuts in my stack pipe in about a half hour, and most of that time was spent hyperventilating after coordinating our strenuous effort to clamp the jaws together as we gradually increased the tension adjustment.

It's a great tool because it's elegant in its simplicity, and it just plain old works. I rented it for $15 for the day.

Here's the new PVC installed:

In which I replace a compression coupling

After being nearly frightened out of replacing an old "dresser coupling" by my plumber, I decided to just deal with this.

The water coming into my house from the meter is plumbed in galvanized steel, and quite a while back I'd ripped out all the old (out of service) galvanized pipe from the basement. So I knew it was in terrible shape, and my plumber scared me into thinking perhaps even looking at the supply line coming into the house wrong would cause it to explode, and then cost me lots of money to re-run new pipe to my meter (under the sidewalk, all the way at the curb).

But then I decided to poke at the old compression coupling, and realized it was not that difficult to remove, so I pulled it off. The galvanized coming up (you can see it in the top of the picture at the right) didn't look to be in terrible condition -- the pipe wall was still fairly thick at least -- and so I cleaned up the stub as best I could and picked up a new compression coupling at Home Depot.

Yeah, I bought a galvanized coupling. Sue me. The brass ones were like 20 bucks and I think the rubber inside this thing will go before it does. The brass stub cost me about 9 bucks anyway.

This doesn't leak, and seems to be quite sound. I've got it uncovered and have been looking at it occasionally to see if there's any leakage, and there has not been any since it was installed (I backdated this post to 11/14, but it's now about 3 weeks later). Case closed. Soon I will bury it a bit to immobilize it -- apparently pipe motion is bad for these couplings, which makes sense.

I don't look forward to the day when the supply line from the meter does spring a leak. I'll probably be too OCD to replace it with PVC, and will insist on copper, just like I did for the house plumbing (instead of choosing PEX).

Tiling ideas for the bathroom

While visiting with my mom on her birthday, I found myself in a toy store. My mom loves them, and so do I, and I found a great "art toy" called Trapecolo. It's a set of trapezoidal colored tiles and a hexagonal tray, and with it you can create designs like this one, which we made:

The difficulty I have now is that I can't find trapezoidal ceramic tiles suitable for a tub surround. There are so many neat patterns that can be made -- abstract ones, geometric ones, and even this one which Julia made:

I think it looks like a dancing ant, but I think that may just be all the lead I've inhaled.

If you have any leads on trapezoidal (or even equilateral triangle) tiles, please let me know.

Alligator extravaganza

So I was in the middle of sweating my new cold supply lines, but wasn't ready to make decisions about routing near my water heater. Having just bought some of those Gatorbite caps to use to test my work as I went along, it occurred to me I could use the same type of fitting to make temporary connections between my new work and the old plumbing in the house. Here's what I ended up with:

Kind of pricey, and (this is a backdated post) I haven't reused it, but it was cool to see how these fittings work. And hey, if I ever need to make a temporary connection between 3/4" and 1/2" again, I've got it made.