Project “Running Water Please”

Unless we do some major work, our water pipes will freeze in the winter. This post details our plan to fix this problem.

Our house is serviced by a well. The water pump, water pressure tank, and all of the water pipes are located underneath the house, an area which is uninsulated and exposed to the elements. What this means is that in the winter, the water in the pipes will freeze.

In order to ensure that the pipes won’t freeze, the first project we are attempting to tackle is to reconfigure all of the plumbing. We are not plumbers, but, out of necessity, we are becoming plumbers—perhaps becoming very bad, incompetent plumbers, but plumbers none the less.

To combat the freezing, we debated between trying to warm the area under the house versus simply bringing all of the necessities up into the warmed house. We decided on the latter; we are converting a bathroom into a utility closet, which will store the pump and all the necessities for the water. The pipes will run directly underneath the floorboards but be surrounded with insulation.

Our initial plan to leave the house in its 1950s glory is falling by the wayside, as we are encountering rot, sagging, bug infestations, and severe disintegration. Thus, the project of converting a bathroom into a utility closet to house our water pump starts with renovating the small room.

Stripping it down to a frightening mess.

And then cleaning it up again.

This room saw us go from “How are you supposed to attach these pipes??” to creating a crazy mass of plumbing gadgets.

Meanwhile, we are reconfiguring the plumbing elsewhere in the house, which means getting rid of extraneous pipes and simplifying the water in the house.

We have reduced our plumbing needs to one bathroom (toilet, sink, shower), a kitchen sink, and one outdoor faucet for the garden. In addition, we will be laying the framework for a washing machine. Where possible, we have rearranged room layouts to shorten the length of required pipe.

We’ve been flying by the seat of our frozen, clay-covered pants over these past two weeks as we scramble in and out of the dirt-floor crawlspace doing the plumbing.  But we’ve been guided and helped immensely by two amazing neighbours, both who have renovated their own century-old homes. We are pleased to have had a visit or two every day for the past week. Thank you neighbours!