So we've had a problem in our house for the last two winters, and I do think there's a point where
you can take jerry-rigging things too far. Our pipes have been freezing to the point
where every time it drops below zero outside, like right at that zero line, we have to turn
on our sinks just a little bit and leave them running all night so that they don't freeze up.
Because as I'm sure you know, if pipes freeze, ice expands and breaks the pipes, leaving running
water inside of your walls, which is not a good thing. So I've spent the day trying to figure out
why the pipes are freezing and I found it. Someone has taken jerry-rigging too far. Check this out.
Coming outside, this is the window that I was just standing in front of. There's a vent right down
here for the air intake of the house. If I set that off to the side and we peer into this vent,
we can see that there are pipes running lengthwise through the vent way down in
there. So as the furnace draws in cold air from the outside to heat it up for the house,
it's as if our water pipes are literally sitting in the outside air – freezing. Frozen pipes are
never a good thing, and if we're ever gone for a weekend or something and aren't around to turn
on the water so they don't freeze, it could be a very expensive damaging situation for the house.
Now obviously this isn't to code, not how it's supposed to be. It was just a quick fix while
they were doing a remodel. And so now we have to go into the basement, pull out the ceiling,
reroute the pipes, and hopefully fix it correctly. We'll see how it goes. Let's get started.
[Intro]
Back inside I have a laser thermometer right here.
If I'm shining the laser at the floor, the floor is like 70 degrees
until I move in right above the vent where it drops down to like 60 degrees because that's
the cold air coming in from outside underneath the floor. And where the pipes are freezing.
Time for a little update. So we have the ceiling all torn out. It's kind of unique construction.
It's an older house and I haven't really seen this stuff before. But we did end up finding
the water pipes. So this is the giant duct that goes out for the intake, and then this right here
is a hot air duct for something else. But the water line...you can see the blue line and the
red line going through this joist here into the vent, and then out the other side right there.
So I'm no expert on plumbing, but I think if we jerry-rig their jerry-rig with a slightly
better jerry-rig, then we should come out on top. So I'm just going to take the water
lines and run it here next to this metal stud because there's a little cavity between this
and the drywall. We should be alright. If we do it that way, the pipes will be out of the cold
air from the outside and they'll be closer to the warm air from the inside. And they won't freeze.
We'll save the insulation. We'll try to use that later. So now we gotta go buy drywall, insulation,
and plastic piping. And it'll show up right here. [Snap] And there we have it. I got the Tupex
tubes. These guys we will use to splice into the existing pipes. We have the crimper, the crimps,
the couplings...hopefully we only need to make one cut, but then I imagine we'll have to splice in a
bit longer tube since instead of going through the duct, we're going underneath the duct and it'll
be a little bit longer when we connect into the water pipes on that side going up into the sink.
Back here is the water shut off to the whole house.
That is on right now. I'm going to turn it off because it's perpendicular to the pipe.
And we should be safe to chop the tubes and not have water go everywhere. There
will still be water in the pipes, but it won't be pressurized so we should be fine.
So I do have this faucet turned on right now and there is no water pressure left
in the lines, so we should be good. Do a little cut-a-rooskie right here.
No water. Hopefully I'll be able to pull those through and then run them right here underneath.
So now that I have these pipes cut and pulled out of the vent, I can run them underneath
where there's no cold air and just couple them together. And as a guy who has never worked with
plumbing before, it seems pretty straightforward but I'm going to practice once right here.
So here we have the crimp right which I'm going to put over the plastic pipe,
then put the coupling in it. And it says that the crimp needs to be about 1/8th
of an inch from the end. And if you have three hands it's a little bit easier.
Make sure my crimper is lined up and that it's not like crimping at an angle or anything.
Clicks together, and then I should just be able to repeat that process for the other side.
Putting on the crimp ring, sliding it onto the coupling, crimping it down.
And once those crimps are installed, it holds pretty well on this end. So I imagine it would
be tight enough to keep the water pressure in as well. That's pretty impressive. And there we have
it, all of the fittings are connected up here. They are metal and solid and I feel pretty good
about it even though this was my first time. I feel like going underneath the cold air is
better than going through the cold air. Now the only thing going through that vent which probably
shouldn't be there is still the natural gas line, but that is not at risk of freezing so we should
be okay. These are going up to the sink. This one's going up above the stove, and when we get
the board installed on the metal studs here, there will still be enough room for these pipes to sit.
We made a mess and now it's time to turn the water back on and see if my joints hold.
Now it's filling up all our pipes with water and hopefully not filling up the room with water.
Not too bad. No drips, no leaks. Now we just need to get the boards installed on the metal
studs and then the drywall over top of that and finish it off with some mud and paint.
So we're trying out this tool for the first time. Riley, pull the trigger on that thing.
It's in? That's sick. What we're trying to do, there used to be some holes right here that we
covered up with a piece of OSB. And on this side, right here, that we're going to cover
up with the same piece of OSB plywood. Now Riley's going to screw it in for us.
This is the first time we've tried using this bit
so it should be interesting. There's not enough room to fit the whole drill
bit, or the whole drill in between the joists, so this is the only solution.
Nice. We also took this square, put this end up against the wall right here and drew a line
along the ceiling so we can square off the drywall.
And then it'll be easier to patch this massive hole we made.
Now we won't have cold air coming from the vent in between the joists.
Now, since all the blown in insulation is kind of hard to put up there without the
white stuff underneath, we're just putting in some regular wall insulation up in the ceiling
and it should get the job done. And then we'll put another small strip right here. Then we'll
be able to put up the backing board that they did their construction with in the first place. We
finally got the mess cleaned up and we have some scrap wood, half inch, put up in the top to kind
of hold onto those metal studs. Got the drywall cut, now it's time to lift it up into place.
So this is the tape I'm going to use to tape up the seams in the drywall. It's kind of like
a mesh that allows the mud to seep through and fill up the gap between the pieces of drywall.
It's more for patch jobs and smaller projects, but it also hides a lot of mistakes which is
what we're after since I don't do this every day. And then I've seen a bunch of people...I've
seen some people use like a little tray to hold things...like a trough. I just like this
longer thing. This is better for me. And then something you really want to
do is make sure there's no dust that ever gets into this because if there's a dust
speck in your mud while you're mudding, it leaves like a giant streak and it's a real pain.
And then this first coat of mud is just going to be like a rough coat,
like super thick because we're going to sand it down and smooth it out later.
I want it to be thick enough to cover the quadrants of the tape,
as well as kind of like to blend this edge.
First coat of mud is in place. The next...we'll let it dry for 24 hours or so and then we'll put
the next coat on and we'll feather out the seams to make them wider so it's more of a gradual
transition between the layers of drywall. Then all we gotta do is paint. Alright so the wider layer
of mud around the seam is there. It's sanded down so that it's like a flat surface. Now I'm going
to texture that panel so it matches the rest of the ceiling. And the texture that is used on this
ceiling is what looks like a knock down texture, meaning that I put a layer of mud up there,
it's got some grooves and some peaks and stuff in it. And then I use my trowel to lightly skim over
the top and knock it down. Hopefully that makes sense. Then we just let it dry and it's done.
So this part is going to use a lot of mud. Basically I just need to get it all over
the top of that ceiling, and to do that we're going to use a sponge and just dab it in place.
Alright, the mud is in place. My hands are dirty and the camera is dirty,
but we are getting there. So basically right now it's just a thick coating of mud,
and what I'm going to do is take this sponge and just kind of like put it on the ceiling
and just get some of these peaks that we can knock down. Now I'm not sure if I want to
stick with this sponge method before I take the trowel and knock it all down because the trowel
also does the peaks but does them a little bit bigger which I think
was partly what was going on with the person who did this roof initially. And hopefully it blends
a little bit better. I'm also going into the original blend so that it kind of like fades
together as it goes out after we do the painting. So, and the reason we got everything flat
beforehand was so that no one sees the flat lines along the crease where we joined the two seams of
drywall together. Once I'm done getting all these peeks, we'll wait for like, I don't know, 15,
20 minutes because this is just the regular compound and not the quick drying compound.
Then I'll knock them all down with a light brush once it's had time to set. Kind of fun.
So you can see this is the texture of the ceiling previously.
And then with this texture that I just mudded, if I kind of knock it down...and
I'll do...when it's all dry I'll do one more brush over it with this.
This gets rid of the peaks but leaves a texture. It should blend pretty well. It should blend in
pretty well with the rest of the ceiling once we get it painted. And now that it's dry,
scrape down all the high points, and we're ready to paint.
And there we have it. We are finally done. What used to be a massive problem
is now fixed. It took us a couple days but I guess that just teaches us to
make sure and do things right the first time. Everything else we can jerry-rig.
If you have any questions, leave them down in the comments. I think it was a fun project. I'm in no
way an expert on where plumbing should be run, but I wouldn't put it through an air intake vent
when the air outside is freezing. Thanks a ton for watching and I'll see you around.