Time for Laundry - This Time With Style!

It's a small victory in a large war, but the new laundry sink is finally in and ready for action. As you no doubt recall from an earlier post, I needed to replace the old cement & steel laundry sink. It weighed about 900 pounds and the steel legs were rusting away. Not a good combination. I did some test fitting previous to today and had things ready to go, but needed to make a couple of minor changes. With the old tub, the water lines connected to the top of the faucet (which was trashed). The new tub's faucet connected from underneath, so I ran a couple of braided steel lines with shut-off's. Since the sink needs to be up against the wall for stability (it's plastic, after all) I had to drill a couple of 1" holes in the backboard of the sink. Easy solution, and problem solved. A little quality-time with my Ryobi cordless hammer-drill and the holes are drilled for the concrete screws. It's amazing how much more sturdy the sink is with a couple of anchors in place. The last piece of the puzzle will be to take care of the drain line from the water softener (just to the left of the faucet). I just need to cut out about 12" of the line and splice it back together. It's copper, and I added a short length of plastic tube at the end to better divert the water into the tub. To the right of the tub is one of two drain stacks in the house. The last thing I wanted to do was to break anything connected directly to the stack. So far, so good!




While I was in the basement, I took the opportunity to finally get some boxes out of the way. We had started stacking the still-boxed stuff as we were moving in, but when we had some heavy rain I found a small trickle of water coming in at the same corner of the basement where we were stacking boxes. It appears that the gutters hadn't been cleaned for at least a decade, and plenty of water was flowing out over the gutters. After taking care of that mess, it appears that my basement leak problems are done (for now?). To be safe, I picked up some 2x2 floor panels which are tongue-and-groove, with a plastic egg-carton bottom. They're designed for basement renovations to avoid water problems. I'm spreading them out a bit compared to how they're typically used in an effort to avoid more spending than necessary. At $4.95 each, they're cheap insurance from water damage to our boxes.

Basement Updates

In an earlier post I mentioned the old sump pump and cement laundry tub. We've had some wet weather over the past few days which means the sump pump should be seeing some action. Every time I hear it turn on, it reminds me of how old it is and what kind of damage we could get if it died. I used that as the incentive to replace it today. How old is it? No idea, but the rust makes me think it's been here a few years.




A run to Ace and Menards got me all the pieces I thought I would need. Actually, I went overboard as usual and got two different check valves, various clamps, etc to make sure I could do the job in one shot. I go to these stores so often that I'll just return the extra stuff. Luckily this plan worked, as I ended up using various parts from both places to get the pump installed. A check valve was added at the pump housing, and I added a PVC line from there to the old sump output line. Testing of it found no leaks, and everything appears to work as planned. Besides the piece of mind, the pump should need to work much less than the old pump now that the check valve is installed. The only "problem" is that the new pump sits lower in the sump and keeps the cement covers from sitting close around the pump like it used to. Now there's enough room for the cat to get in there and drown. Oh damn, would that make me sad...




I've also started putting together the new laundry tub. My only concern is connecting the new PVC to the old metal line. Actually, it's not the connecting of the pieces which worries me, it's breaking the old parts when I take it apart which has me worried. I'd like to just connect the parts together without having to remove the entire drain line, but we'll see how that goes. Before loosening the pieces, I'll give 'em a soak in penetrating oil to help them come apart. The new plastic pieces will also be put together with an extra layer of plumber's putty in the joints to help avoid leaks. For once, I'd like to have a leak-free setup on the first try!