Down the Drain

In the continuing DIY story of the small house, this post is not the prettiest. There may not be any motivating words or photos for you here either. 

Unless you want a kitchen floor like ours. There are some great shots of that.

The small house was built in 1958. The standard for plumbing material was galvanized steel. Galvanizing involves coating the steel with zinc to prevent the steel from rusting. It should last a long time and it is pretty cheap to use.

But it does not last forever. And it certainly did not last until 2012 when we bought a bunch of it with our house.

Looking at different options for replacing this stuff, Hero and I decided to not do it ourselves. Very few times in our lives we have hired out home projects. It felt a little strange. But as Hero said, he would rather work a few hours overtime than mess with the plumbing. 

We choose to use PEX plumbing. It is a flexible plastic tubing that requires less joint fittings, is corrosion resistant and pretty inexpensive.

We were especially pleased about the "corrosion resistant" part.

Wonder why.

See that tiny hole at the end of the pipe? As you can imagine, not much water pressure in this house.

And a close up. 

Yuck. 

This was what our water was flowing though. I try to be positive about it though. Our iron levels must have been great. And our immunity boosted way up.

Who knew this is what was lurking inside all those cozy pipes?

Here is what we have now. 

Clean. New. Clean. Lovely. Clean. Done.

And clean.

p.s. Love the kitchen floor? If you are interested, we can give you a call when we rip it out.