The Laundry Room

Even though I worked on this project off and on throughout the duration of the remodel, I will chronicle it now because I had to address it immediately after we finished the kitchen. As I mentioned before, we had trouble with quite a bit of calcium build up in the water. This was most flagrantly obvious in the dishwasher.

It was a problem area from the beginning of our sojourn in the house. The first dishwasher came with the place, and had a problem with one of the plastic runners that allowed the bottom tray to slide in and out. In their always unenthusiastic and sometimes violent usage of the dishwasher, our children forced the tray open, which bent the track, causing the bottom heating element into the plastic bottom of the body of the dishwasher, melting it clean through. At that point, any time we decided to use the dishwasher, we were also deciding to flood the kitchen and wash the edges of the carpets on either side. So we got a new dishwasher, a Kitchen Aid, with the steel tub. It worked great—until it got literally clogged up with white sludge. It was the built up calcium from our water.

There had been a water softener when we first moved into the house, and it worked, but it started leaking, and it overflowed a couple of times, so I took it out, telling my wife in all my denial that the water wasn't that hard. Rather than leave the connections there, I cut them out and soldered solid pipe in its place, thinking that any joint would be a place where calcium would have a chance to accumulate. We went without water softening for eleven years, and I shudder to think of the struggles our water had to make through the gauntlet of built up sludge to find its way into our sinks, hoses, toilets, tubs and showers.

A brand new, modern kitchen needs to have a dishwasher, and now I knew that in order for a dishwasher to last more than a year in our place with water so hard it puts diamonds to shame, I knew I had to put in a water softener. And that meant major plumbing revision. All of that kind of plumbing was in the laundry room.

It was my least favorite room in the house for several reasons. It had a cement floor that looked like the concrete had been finished after it had already set, which means it had humps and valleys all across it. The dryer, which vents outside, was not set against the outside wall, because the washer hookups were. During the course of massive laundry loads (we raised a large, laundry intensive family in the house), the dryer vent had become disengaged from the dryer, and the dryer had spewed its very moist, lint filled exhaust into the room, which resulted in moldy, peeling, hideous sheetrock.

I fixed the dryer vent several times, but only half-heartedly. When I got really serious, I invested about 20 dollars in a secure hose and large hose clamps, and it worked perfectly, but the (lint) cows were already out of the barn by then.

So before I did anything else down there, except replumb for the well, I put a white Masonite siding over the peeling sheetrock. It didn't look all that great when I was done, but it looked about forty times better, allowing me to go in and do the rest of the work I needed to do.

Swallowing all my uneasiness (it takes courage to cut main plumbing lines. In the process of soldering everything together, it becomes exceedingly difficult to assure that there are no leaks anywhere. The only way to find them is to turn the water back on, and if there happens to be a large leak, the ceiling, floor, walls, windows (and maybe even neighbor’s house if the windows are open) get watered. Turning off the water, emptying the pipes (soldering will not take if there is any water in the system) is exceedingly tedious, especially when it is necessary, and it always is, to heat the leaky joint, pull the pipes apart, sand down all the solder, apply the flux and try again) I cut open the main line and got to work. I had to put in a filter which sits in the line ahead of the water softener, eliminating sand, clay, small fish (just kidding about the fish) and other larger sludge. We bought a General Electric Filter, which needs to be changed every three months or so, but makes a huge difference. It hangs in the main water line, happily doing it's job, with a blue light that will flash and an annoying beep that will sound when it needs to be changed.

Next, with huge ambition, I soldered together a system that would allow me to divert the water around the softener if I wanted. It required 22 soldering joints, and it took me an entire precious Saturday to put in. I would have been proud of it, except it leaked in three places, one of which I couldn't locate. Eventually, I took it out. It cut the water pressure down because it shunted the water through half inch pipe when it had been using three quarter inch. I almost cried when I saw my masterpiece sitting on the back porch waiting for recycle, with its loose ends, like a mutant octopus, jutting out randomly in all directions.

And as it turned out, my efforts to put in a shunting system were foolish. The softener itself had one built into it. We picked ours up at Home Depot for about three hundred fifty dollars. It was quite nifty, because everything happened in a single unit, which I put next to the water heater. But the way I did it, the thing opened against the wall, and the salt (all softeners I know of need salt to recharge the system) could not be conveniently poured in. Naturally, (it may not seem natural to you but unfortunately it is to me) I had put it in backwards.

I had to turn off the water, drain the system and redo twelve solder joints to do it. It worked just fine in its backwards state, but it wasn't satisfactory, and I knew it. Usually my wife is the one that tells me it just isn't going to work the way it is, but in this case, I figured it out for myself.

And, I have to admit, it was worth it. The system worked perfectly and he MLB (massive lime buildup) ceased.

The water heater was next. I had replaced four of them in our fourteen years because the sludge that built up on the heating units (because we didn't have a water softener) caused them to burn out. Eventually my wife found heating units that had a different configuration, designed not to build up, and they had worked great for about eight years, but the tank was filling up with lime and because of the septic tank backing up (that's a problem we fixed later) the bottom was rotting away. So I bought heater number five, the privileged one, that was going to have all the fresh water that entered it filtered and softened. As I installed it, I felt kind of bad that its predecessors had been so deprived. (Kind of like the younger children getting stuff you couldn't afford when the older kids were little)

Compared to what I'd already done, the water heater was a snap. I didn't have to do any rerouting or soldering for it. Mainly, I drained the old one, (turned off the power) undid the wiring, unscrewed two pipes, the inlet and the outlet, hollered for my boys to help me move it out, then while they were there, had them help me move the new one in, screwed in the inlet and outlet pipes, attached the wiring, turned on the power and the water and voila! There it was, working perfectly, leak free. (I have to mention the leak free part because it is quite unusual)

The laundry room was essentially done, but I had one more thing I wanted to do, aside from the painting, window blinds, curtains, light fixtures, shelving, and other minor details my wife insisted on, that I didn't want to do. It needed a large tub with a big drain to wash out muddy boots, ice chest, kitchen wastebaskets and other jobs to large and gross for the kitchen sink or a bathtub. I had considered putting one in before but thought it too hard, but after what I'd just been through, it was a breeze. I tapped into the drain for the washer, and atttached the pipes without too much difficulty. Then I put Y connectors on the washing machine hookups and attached rubber pipes to both for my hot and cold water. The tub was great, and very handy, and it really bugs me that for thirteen and a half years, my wife didn't have it. If I had just tried a little harder to be creative, our boots would have been a lot cleaner.