It’s been a bit of work, but I’m making more progress on the bathroom remodel. After we hauled the concrete out of the basement I went over to city hall to pull a permit for installing the new plumbing and fixtures in the bathroom…and instead left with permits for the framing, electrical and more. I understand why they’re needed to prevent hack work, but I was not planning on dropped $200 that day on paperwork 🙁 Fortunately my city doesn’t need any sort of advanced drawings when it comes to preliminary building plans, but they still need to visit my house 6 times throughout this process to sign-off on everything.
Once the permits were in hand, the plumber came by with a helper, clarified what we were trying to do in the room, and laid down the pipes depicted below. They were planning on taking two days for the job but finished a day early thanks to all the digging that we did (another plus to doing your own manual labor).
The new basement plumbing, facing south. The black box to the right is covering the shower drain, and we completely redid the hub along the back wall to the left.
The new basement plumbing facing north. The tall stack on the right is next to where the toilet will be, and the pipes to the left the new vanity.
We then had the inspectors come in to do a tour of our work, as well as give suggestions on how to do the framing for the room, when they called us out on one of the couplings. The house’s old plumbing was made out of cast iron and steel, which tends to degrade and rust out over the years, and we replaced much of it with PVC. However, we couldn’t replace the main pipe going out to the street, so had to join the new plastic to the old iron. Apparently you need special couplings in order to do that kind of join as two materials react differently to heat, cold, pressure, etc. The inspectors thought that the coupling used wasn’t certified for that, but if you take a closer look at the label….ta da! Cast iron, plastic and more! So now I need to call them back and tell them they don’t know what they’re talking about. That should go well.
Word to the wise, make sure that your plumbing couplings are rated for use with all of the different pipe materials you have in your home. The inspector called us out on this, but the plumber confirmed (and you can see it on the coupling) that it is rated for underground use with both iron and plastic.
Next up, we fill the holes with concrete, level it out, and start building the framing. Its wonderful seeing this idea come to life, and it’ll be even better once it’s finished!
