The Super Official Homeowners Thread

[WRXtranceformed]

Congrats man!  Mooresville is awesome, its own little world up there.  My dentist is actually up that way.

Build is coming along quickly!  Who is your builder?

Thanks, DR Horton.  Know anything about them?

DR Horton is good!  They built in VA and they are actually building homes in another section of our neighborhood down here across the border in SC.  You should have a good experience, but just like any production builder you will need to stay on top of them for QC stuff.  It usually just comes down to how competent your construction manager is and how on top of things the DR Horton local service department are

[D_Eclipse9916]

Exciting stuff, DJ! I will definitely come down once you guys are settled in. Corner lot will be great! Where can you park the trailer? I'm assuming everything else will fit in the garage/driveway easily.

Neighborhood will have dedicated trailer parking (remember it’s Lake Norman and everyone has boats!)

[Beej]

:highfive: fellow wfh nova escaper!

Interesting about the having space vs family neighborhood thing. I also want both but am coming to realize that it may be one or the other. Plus more space would be more property to maintain...tough happy medium to find. 

Like I said before, my wife had nothing bad to say about Lake Norman. There may be people there that don’t party, but she didn’t know them.  I hope it’s awesome for you guys!

[davej]

Sounds like you guys were able to make a great move line up! Hope the rest of the build and relocation goes well. The moms moving also is going to be awesome, we had about 5 long years of being down here before my in-laws retired and relocated. Having family around makes raising your own a bit easier.

All in favor of Turducken 2018: The Christening?

[BLINGMW]

glad you got out, welcome to the "south"

[Steve85]

Congrats on the house and move. Sounds like the perfect place for you guys

[ScottyB]

MM come down and visit us

how about up? we drive through yours and Lee's back yards coming from augusta on 77 to get to family in roanoke. have cooler, will travel.

super happy for you man, on many fronts. sounds like a great move for your entire family, and you'll like the area...so much car stuff to do in NC. asheville's a great day trip as well, and man...there are some incredible driving roads about 2 hrs. west of you, you could spend an entire day out there and only pass a few cars.

[WRXtranceformed]

MM come down and visit us

how about up?  we drive through yours and Lee's back yards coming from augusta on 77 to get to family in roanoke.  have cooler, will travel.

super happy for you man, on many fronts.  sounds like a great move for your entire family, and you'll like the area...so much car stuff to do in NC.  asheville's a great day trip as well, and man...there are some incredible driving roads about 2 hrs. west of you, you could spend an entire day out there and only pass a few cars.

He's not wrong.  The areas outside of Asheville and Boone where we go hiking have some of the best driver roads imaginable.  One of my favorites even has "passing lanes" built into it on the way up.  I regret I never took my Jag on that one, but the side roads that lead to the trail head are questionable even with truck level suspension clearance

[Steve85]

The first little repair in the new home was a toilet tank valve and it looked like this, caked in hard water residue.


We were certainly past due on installing the softener. This hardness will kill our appliances in short order. Off to Lowes where Whirlpool 33K grain softener was 10% off. Got the softener, a few valves, some pipe, fittings, a primer/glue combo pack and 160# of salt. I later went back for a whole house filter...the plumbing version of "while I'm in there".



It was also the first test of home improvement shopping with a wagon instead of SUV and it all fit just fine!

This is the area I had for install right at the water service, I'm glad it was very accessible.





The softener and the whole house filter both come with bypass valves built into their plumbing inlet/outlet but I wanted to be able to completely bypss both so I went with a three valve set up. This also allowed me to get the valves in, turn the water back on to the house (no pressure to finish should something major get in the way) and work with dry plumbing for the units. Same for if something happens in the future, I can bypass with turning a few valves and fix the offending unit as needed.

This was my first time doing plastic pressure plumbing, have always done copper but figured it was just like small waste and vent plumbing, instead of 1.5 to 3" pipes, it's .5 to 1.0 piping. I was worried getting the valve setup inline without using a slip coupling but thankfully there was enough give in the main line to get it in no problem. Well, even though I had the water off and all faucets open for a while to drain, still had a nice spray once I cut through the main! 

Low and out of the picture is the main service valve, the way this setup works is with blue valves closed and red open, the softener and filter are completely bypassed, no pressure to any of the plumbing or the units. Red off and blue on, all water goes through the units for them to do their magic.



I went to work making and putting together the puzzle pieces which is the fun part of the job. I wanted to have room behind to service the units but also needed to be able to support the plumbing to prevent vibration and damage.

Did a dry test fit of all the pieces. The flow is out of the blue valve (middle of picture), 90 down into the filter (shorter unit), up and out of the filter over to the softener, then up behind gas plumbing, 45 out and 90 back in to the top blue valve. I should have rotated the blue valves 90 degrees to make them a bit easier to get at but no biggie. The two half inch pipes coming off the main with the brass valves are the outside faucet lines. I was tempted to put the front one on the system so washing the cars gets the filtered and soft water but decided against it for now. I can always tie it in at top where the main line 45s out from behind the gas lines.


It was time time to huff primer and glue. There was more slop in the dry fit than I anticipated and had a re-cut one of the pieces but overall it went smashingly well.



And done, ready for strapping and bracing! (or so I thought...)



Following the startup procedures they have you bypass the units at their inlet/outlet valves and pressurize to check the plumbing. All was good at first, then the pressure built and BAM, a fitting popped off and it was like a damn fire hose in the basement.



That's the section I had cut a new piece for and never glued it...oops. Glued it and went up for dinner to let it dry. Came down and put the pressure to everything again and checked for leaks, which is always fun when everything is already wet   . I did the start up procedures and definitely under estimated the need to strap down the discharge hose. The filter rinse blew out of the drain and it was like another fire hose, though more like May's Grand Tour fire truck and less like a real one.

1 day in and so far so good! Water is starting to fell better. It takes a while to work through the system since the hot water tank is full of hard water and I wasn't about to drain it just to get soft water faster. Also, plastic pipe is so much easier to work with than copper.

[Sully]

What's the discharge hose for? Sorry never dealt with either type of unit... Is it to change the filter or something?

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[JPolen01]

Nice looking work. Were you a plumber at some point? That primer and glue is no joke! I've definitely caught a major buzz after helping a buddy plumb a new bathroom in his rental house. Good times.

[Steve85]

What's the discharge hose for? Sorry never dealt with either type of unit... Is it to change the filter or something?

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

The filter is a permanent filter type that uses carbon medium and it backflushes every 14 days to remove the sediment and clean the filter. The backflush and rinse go out the discharge hose...with surprising velocity. The softener "recharges" and flushes too.

Nice looking work. Were you a plumber at some point? That primer and glue is no joke! I've definitely caught a major buzz after helping a buddy plumb a new bathroom in his rental house. Good times.

My friends dad was a plumber and I worked as a helper for a while, so yeah, sort of. Didn't make much, but it comes in handy. One of my first jobs with him was in a crawl space using that stuff, apparently he had a tolerance I didn't.

[HAULN-SS]

have that same filter. It backflushes with a vengeance. I ended up setting mine to every 10 days or so. Also, it cut down on the flow pressure a bit - maybe you wont have that problem since your softener can act as a bigger reserve.

[Ryan T]

Also, plastic pipe is so much easier to work with than copper.

Yes, yes, yes and yes! Sweating copper in a tight space is such a huge pain in the ass. Even using a ton of gator bites would make the job you just did much more daunting (and expensive) than using plastic. Replacing old copper can be such a headache because it can be hard to find enough give in the pipe to make the proper adjustments.

Your install looks awesome! Like plumber porn.

[ScottyB]

dang that's a doozy project Steve. looks like a super clean install though! my parents run a softener, and have for years, and its really made a difference in the life of not only their water heater but also all the tubs, fittings, and basins. you'll be surprised how much you might be able to cut back on soap and detergent use as well, the soft water will make that stuff go a long way....i don't know the science behind it but its real.

do me a favor though - don't crank that softener too high though. my parents do that and i swear i have to rinse my hands off twice every time i wash just to get the soap film off my hands. drives me crazy.

i put together a cheap temporary veggie garden trellis with pvc pipe last spring and can confirm, PVC cement will F you up if you get your face in it. i'm not adventurous enough to compare it to tide pods but i don't recommend it.

[JPolen01]

Serious question. Why is the water so jacked up in the south? We have no issues up here and nobody has a softener.

[WRXtranceformed]

We don't have hard water here in SC, but they do use less chlorides which leads to pink yellowing after a while in shower, etc. I may install a filter here at some point

[Steve85]

Also, plastic pipe is so much easier to work with than copper.

Yes, yes, yes and yes! Sweating copper in a tight space is such a huge pain in the ass. Even using a ton of gator bites would make the job you just did much more daunting (and expensive) than using plastic. Replacing old copper can be such a headache because it can be hard to find enough give in the pipe to make the proper adjustments.

Your install looks awesome! Like plumber porn.

Thanks! 

Yeah, not sure I'd want to use my torch rought around all those gas lines. The thing I did like about copper is the slip coupling so you really didn't need any play to get something in-line. I'm not sure how well a glued one would work since it seems you'd have to push the glue out of at least one side. Yeah those gator bites make it tempting for harry homeowner but they do get expensive...

dang that's a doozy project Steve.  looks like a super clean install though!  my parents run a softener, and have for years, and its really made a difference in the life of not only their water heater but also all the tubs, fittings, and basins.  you'll be surprised how much you might be able to cut back on soap and detergent use as well, the soft water will make that stuff go a long way....i don't know the science behind it but its real.

do me a favor though - don't crank that softener too high though.  my parents do that and i swear i have to rinse my hands off twice every time i wash just to get the soap film off my hands.  drives me crazy.

i put together a cheap temporary veggie garden trellis with pvc pipe last spring and can confirm, PVC cement will F you up if you get your face in it.  i'm not adventurous enough to compare it to tide pods but i don't recommend it.

Thanks! Haha, yeah, I need to see how the default setting works and go from there. I need to check the hardness using water from the outside line and set it. I remember over charging our system in the old house and I couldn't get out of the shower, just felt like I still had soap all over. Reminds me of the videos where someone keeps pouring shampoo on someones head without them knowing and they keep rinsing and rinsing...

Serious question. Why is the water so jacked up in the south? We have no issues up here and nobody has a softener.

I think it's just differences in the level of water treatment or even the source? I grew up in MoCo and our water was really good, even treated with flouride (maybe that's common) so we didn't have one. The house before this one was well fed and mys first intoduction to water softeners. I was kind of surprised to need one here on municipal water. My parents live at Bryce Resort and they never had one when it was well and don't need one now after the mountain got "city" water service. I don't think my brother in NC has one either.

[davej]

Going back a few pages, got sticker shock from my $600+ electric bill this month, and yeah, we had a week where it was pretty cold, but man heat pumps are just worthless below like 30. We used about double the kWh from this time last year so I'm going to go look around and see which neighbor is running a lead into their house from my outlet.

Date | kWh
Jan 17 2982
Feb 17 2342
Mar 17 2330
Apr 17 1139
May 17 1891
Jun 17 2578
Jul 17 3169
Aug 17 2976
Sep 17 2294
Oct 17 1918
Nov 17 2743
Dec 17 3443
Jan 18 6160

And we burned through about 80 gallons of LP for the 2 fireplaces this month also. I have 2 heat pumps and they are both electric backup. The upstairs unit ate itself a year after we moved in (it was about 8-9 years old at the time) and we replaced it with a better SEER unit, but still electric. If one had to go, I would have preferred larger basement unit so I could have put in a unit with an LP backup.

I'm not sure how energy efficient our place is, I'm guessing not very, but it might be worth having an audit done, although that might make me cry knowing how bad it really is.

---

Steve, I'm subscribing to your water softener newsletter, this was the bottom of one of the tanks where the element should go, and the element in question. (it was a solid bar of build up before I broke it apart) I need to do something for the whole house. Did you look at sectioning off the toilets or outside faucets at all? Or is it not a huge deal to use the treated water for those?

[Steve85]

That heating element and junk in the bottom of the tank look very familiar. The old house (well water with softener) had electric water heater and when I replaced the lower element that's exactly what it looked like.

I did, and they recommend, bypassing the outside hose bibs but I don't think you can or should bypass the toilets. The hard water will take its toll on the toilet valves, seals and flapper. The toilet feeds come off the same plumbing as the vanity and shower so it would require re-plumbing all of that to separate out the toilets. Outside feeds are usually started pretty close to where the main line comes in the house and plumbed separately from the rest of the house making them easy to bypass. If you look at my fourth pic, the bottom blue valve feeds the filter/softener and is just above the two lines with the brass valves that feed the hose bibs.