Introducton To Home Plumbing

Most people fix dripping faucets as a matter of routine. Beyond that chore, plumbing generally has been left to plumbers. Yet today a whole list of tasks once the province of professionals—replacing old fixtures and faucets with modern easier-to-use types, extending pipes to add or relocate equipment, installing purification filters, special valves or built-in sprinklers—can be and often must be handled by amateurs.

Economy is one reason; the professional must charge so much for his time that a householder may save money completing a job himself even if he buys a special tool to be used only once. Perhaps more important is the revolution in plumbing techniques that has eliminated the requirements for brute strength and dexterous skills; new materials are light in weight and many are assembled simply by tightening nuts or applying glue. And an increasingly significant factor in the trend to do-it-yourself plumbing is the growing concern for a resource long taken for granted. Water is constantly getting more expensive: care and economy in its use in private plumbing systems has become essential.

• Every family can keep its water bills down—while enjoying the many conveniences of new equipment—by a regular program of repairs and minor alterations.
• Repairing a drip while it is still in the drop-by-drop stage saves an amazing quantity of water—a trickle wastes a bathtubful of water a day, and a steady stream wastes enough water to meet all of a family's daily needs.
• Inexpensive aerators, easily fitted into sink and lavatory spouts, deliver a splash-free stream and pay for themselves many times over in water savings.
• Replacing an existing toilet with one of the new water-saving models can reduce water consumption by gallons a day—and you can keep the saving at a maximum by a simple adjustment that controls the length of the flush cycle.
• If permitted by local codes, a dry well —a separate, simple drainage system for certain appliances—lightens the burden on a septic tank so that it may not need costly cleaning so often.

Using the right tools and methods, you can meet the crises and increase the conveniences of your plumbing system—seal a burst pipe or thaw a frozen one, unclog a stopped-up main drain. The modern plumbing materials and fittings that have made these tasks simpler have been largely standardized; the pipes, fittings and fixtures are available everywhere, from the Gulf of Mexico to the provinces of Canada. Some varieties of copper tubing and the increasingly popular plastic pipe are flexible and easy to install. To attach a connection to these pipes, you may not need even to solder or cement a fitting: in many situations a compression-type fitting or a simple mechanical tap-on device will do the job.

You will be able to use these new repair and modernization methods with confidence if you understand how the plumbing system operates. Some of the physical principles are intriguing aspects of fundamental science, but most that you need to know about are very simple. In a plumbing system, cold water from public mains or your own well flows into the house through a service pipe. Inside the house, branch supply lines bring the water under pressure to all plumbing fixtures and most appliances. A separate supply line carries cold water to a water heater; from there, a network of pipes supplies hot water under pressure to the fixtures and appliances that use it. In this supply system the key element is pressure-40 pounds per square inch in most localities, even higher in some large cities.

While the entire supply system brings in water by pressure, the drainage system carries off waste water and sewage by the force of gravity. Drainpipes always slant downward or run vertically, and bends are gentle to make the wastes flow smoothly. The crucial element in the drain system, comparable to the main service line of the supply system, is the large vertical drain called the main soil stack. Most toilets drain directly into the main stack; most other fixtures and appliances empty into slanting branch drains, which connect to the main stack. It, in turn, empties into a slanting main drain—generally laid just beneath the basement floor—that carries the wastes to a public sewer or a septic tank.

At several points in this system are elements intended to keep air passing through the sewer and drains but not into the house. The free passage of air is essential to maintain atmospheric pressure at every point; otherwise a vacuum will develop that will stop waste water from flowing down. This air should not enter living space, of course, for it contains sewage gases.

To keep the sewage gases out of the rooms of a house, every fixture and some drain lines empty into traps—U-shaped passages, permanently filled with water that serves as a barrier to the gases. Sink and lavatory traps are generally accessible and easy to clear or, if necessary, to replace; bathtubs and shower stalls, which empty their wastes through the



floor, can be cleared, but replacing the traps alone is difficult.

While traps seal air inside the drains, it passes through them freely. When waste water flows, air goes downward with it; when no waste flows, air passage reverses and rises in the pipes to escape from the house. This two-way movement is made possible by a venting system—a network of pipes linking many branch drains to the main soil stack, which has a chimney-like pipe rising through the roof to let air in and out.

Plumbing alterations of any kind are controlled by local regulations. There is no nationwide code for the United States or Canada—the so-called National Plumbing Code of the United States sets minimum standards only for federally built structures and may not apply to your home. Local codes have the force of law, and must be observed, but none of them prevents you from working on your own plumbing system, so long as you follow the provisions in the codes. Because they are established to meet the special problems of the particular area in which you live, observing them not only is necessary, but is also a wise precaution for your own health and safety.

Aside from local building codes, national environmental standards are affecting plumbing more and more. While many of these laws are directed at community waste treatment and water supply facilities, one part of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act of 1986 directly affects the plumber: it is no longer legal for any solder containing lead to join the parts of a plumbing system containing potable water. Instead of the old standby 50-50 solder, which contains half tin and half lead, plumbers must now use solders containing mixtures of copper, tin, silver or other metals. Although some of these are more difficult to use, at least one safe-water solder looks just like 50-50 and is used in the same way. Others will soon be developed.

Also because of environmental concerns, many communities today require water-saving toilets, showerheads and faucet sets in all new construction and in existing homes when replacements are made.

Local codes also typically take into account the hardness or softness of the water—that is, whether it is rich or poor in dissolved minerals. And the nature of your water affects the kind of pipe that you should use. Almost everywhere in the United States and Canada, for example, copper pipe is acceptable—but not quite everywhere. In some areas of hard water, minerals build deposits on the inner walls of copper tubing so quickly that supply lines clog. In some soft-water areas, on the other hand, copper tubing is vulnerable to acids in the water. In parts of both areas, copper pipe is prohibited: plumbers must use plastic or galvanized steel.

Venting, too, is affected by local conditions. Normally, a main vent is a single pipe of a standard size rising above the roof line. But in the colder parts of Canada and the United States, snow and ice could block standard vents; codes there specify outsize vent pipes.

You can consult your code at your local health department or building inspector's office; for extensive work, it is helpful to have a copy of your own. You will not need it for an ordinary repair or replacement, but in a new installation it is an indispensable guide to the right materials and the right way to put them together.

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