On Plumbing
our house is full of surprises (still)
A little over a month ago, we received a phone call from the city that they had mistakenly wrapped our water line around the new storm sewer, and that if we wanted, we could get a new line for free. This was after the city tore up our street all summer, having hired contractors who caused a variety of problems, including digging a 3’ deep trench behind new curbs that a neighbor kid fell into and twisted her ankle (I emailed the city on a Thursday afternoon, suggesting this was perhaps a huge liability issue; Friday morning I awoke to the noise of beeping dump trucks full of dirt, ready to fill the trench). They also cut two high pressure gas lines (I called the gas company and reported it; the crew simply left) and nicked our other neighbor’s water line, necessitating a patch. Between the street work, a new poorly poured and then re-poured alley, problems with speed bumps, assorted sandblasting, and construction on our corner of a 5-story, 120 unit apartment building, it’d been a long summer. The house shook every single day. Now, finally, we would get something for our troubles, maybe.
I was so happy to hear about a new water line: we’d wanted one for many years—our original one was plumbed for a single family house, not the triplex we became, and the water pressure was not the best—but the cost seemed unfathomable. Our neighbor down the street got her water main upgraded following a fire and it cost nearly $30,000. On our street, in particular, you have to dig up the entire street and get special permits, because our connection to the main happens on the other side of the road. It has to go far underground so it doesn’t freeze, because sometimes Chicago has a polar vortex and the actual temperature can dip below -25F (wind chill -60F). I’ve been working as a writer for years now. $30,000 is a lot of essays. This was also the number I had in my head for when we’d someday remediate the exterior of the building, take the cement shingles down (probably asbestos), reveal the original narrow fir siding underneath. Everything with our building, I’ve found, costs a multiple of $10,000. If you want to fix something, it will cost $10,000, unless it costs $20,000, or $30,000, or more. Recently I got a bid for new windows and some siding and it was nearly $80,000. We politely declined. This is not something that people generally tell you about home ownership; you just have to figure it out yourself. It’s a little terrifying. We also bought a place that needed a ton of work and was vacant for two years before we moved in. It was boarded up when we got it and we had to break in after the closing because the bank that had owned it didn’t have the right keys. Probably most homeowners have to pay less to fix the big things.
When we originally bought our building, a few plumbers came through to give us estimates on what it’d cost to fix our many issues. Mostly they took photos and texted their friends and we never saw them again, and so we hired people who would come and do the work instead. Our plumbing was laughably bad when we bought the building, a sort of DIY disaster, with fixtures that fell off the backs of trucks, or else pulled from another building before coming to rest in ours. Some of our water ran through gas pipe. Some of it ran through steel pipe, rusted inside. There was a lot of galvanized pipe. Copper connected to steel without the brass fixtures that were supposed to go in between, which caused corrosion of the zinc coating inside the pipes, a fascinating but very expensive chemical reaction. Some of the pipes inside the walls were also steel, and with each passing year, the interior diameter of the pipes would narrow due to rust and age. In the basement, which is not tall enough for my husband to stand up, there were two kitchens and two full bathrooms, with toilets and showers, neither of which were hooked up to the city sewer. (I want you to think about what this means for a minute. We removed everything immediately). One sink, mounted on the wall of an enclosed porch on the first floor, simply drained into the backyard, which was taller than our neighbors’ yards because the former owners of our building had dug out part of the basement and put the dirt there.
The supply line in the street that ran to our house was probably lead, according to old records kept by the city. Nearly everyone in Chicago with an old house has a lead service line. They were putting in lead service lines as recently as 1986; a lead line was required by law within the City of Chicago and in many suburbs. It’s fine as long as the water keeps running, as long as the pipes are not disturbed. If, say, you wrap the pipes around the new storm sewer that you put in the street, as the city did with us, then you may have a problem. It’s impossible to know for sure, but if anybody got a little lead in the water, it would probably be us, as our line splits off earliest from the main, versus our tenants upstairs. The city is cagey about what all this means. We were not told anything one way or the other. They would not test our line but they would give us a new water main, for free. So we said yes. They brought us special pitchers that made our water taste like nothing at all, and then last week, finally, they had secured a contractor to get us a new line, pulled permits, coordinated with the city employees, who dug up the street. They would install three new service lines—one for us, and two for other neighbors, both of whom were also affected.
The plumbers ran the line and connected it to a new place in our system. They did not tie into the original pipe that supplied our house. Instead, they dug an entirely new hole and put a new water line there, and then ran brand new copper to a different place, ultimately connecting it to our hot water heater. The old line was capped partway through, the old meter discarded, a new meter installed. “Won’t this create a backflow issue,” I said. They connected it to our water heater, but not to the existing line, which would now run backwards until it hit a plug, then forwards and upstairs to us and our tenants.
“Don’t worry about it,” the plumber said. He seemed friendly, but dismissive. It’d be fine for now.
Before all of this, I knew almost nothing about plumbing. I’ve unsuccessfully set a toilet, successfully set another toilet, swapped out a few faucets, and plumbed a washing machine and condenser dryer (after slightly flooding our basement a little—a story for another day), but know nothing else. I am much more comfortable wiring things than plumbing things. As a child, my dad taught me how to wire a three way switch, to change outlets, to add a new circuit or two. I know how many amps are needed to run a dishwasher, how to install a GFCI receptacle. Plumbing seemed like a different animal altogether.
But what I said was true, and because I am a woman, nobody listens to me. The day after it was installed, our apartment and the third floor apartment stopped getting water altogether. The second floor had its own line, routed differently; they continued to get mediocre water pressure, dampened by the fact that we had none at all. I wanted to rule out a leak, first; the city came back, sounded the line to make sure it was correctly installed. They checked the new water meter for sand and debris. They sent back the installing plumber, who turned out to be the plumber’s supervisor. He decided to point at things that might make our water pressure worse rather than fixing the issue by connecting directly to our water. “Look at this,” he said, annoyed. “This is causing corrosion!” He pointed to an old steel-copper connection for the upstairs riser, without a brass connector in between.
“I also took chemistry in high school, man. The point is, I used to have water and now I don’t.”
He shrugged.
It was not their problem—they had done good work, installing the new line, they claimed. It was also, according to the city, not the city’s problem. This was a private homeowner’s issue. So last week, instead of getting ready to go to New York to see family and friends, we canceled our trip and replumbed our house.
I’ve learned a lot about plumbing recently, an education in many YouTube videos and the plumbing aisle of Home Depot. I almost got a job there; a man tried to hire me when I directed one guy to crimpers and couplers, told someone else that you can’t get 6” PVC elbows here; have to go to a plumbing supply. I got a pipe cutter for my copper connections. Ori removed hundreds of pounds of steel pipe with the Sawzall, a tool he has come to use frequently since we bought our house eight years ago. I set the old pipe in the parkway and posted it on Facebook marketplace; a scrapper and his wife came and picked it up. We bought lengths of new 3/4” type L copper and 90 degree elbows and t-connectors, some PEX pipe for a temporary connection, a new faucet for the third floor. More fuel for my little propane torch, which I use in ceramics anyway. I replumbed the connection, bypassing the old pipe altogether, cut into the new work the plumber had just completed. We took apart and cleaned all the aerators, flushed the fixtures. And kept moving.