01 September 2019

Pwned by Plumbing: drip, drip, drip

I've spent the last two weeks attempting to get a good pressure test on the plumbing stack.

Well...this is not what you're hoping for when you do a pressure test on the plumbing stack.


Looks like I missed a joint on the glue-up. (But now is the time to find this -- not when everything's buttoned up.)

Even getting this pressure test done was a multi-week ordeal. Because we don't have ready access to water yet, I attempted to do an air pressure test: 5 PSI for the waste stack, and 50 PSI for the water.

I fiddled and futzed with the various fittings and solutions to pressurize the waste stack, and even made a special trip in to Leavenworth to pickup a 2" cleanout tee needed by one of the tools. After all this I couldn't ever get the waste stack to get above 2 PSI. So, finally, I resorted to asking my neighbor to turn on his hose spigott, which he did yesterday.

There was so much pressure built up behind the plug ball to the septic that when Katie started to let the air out of the ball, Katie was drenched by the pressure and the ball got wedge in the Tee, forcing us to pop-it in order to extract it -- a $50 balloon...

The PEX water system was slightly more encouraging.

I was able to get it charged to 50 PSI.


But slowly over a 10 minute period it leaks pressure. 


I thought I bought the right adapter fitting to charge the PEX with water yesterday, but I needed a Female NPT to Female Hose, not a Female NPT to Male Hose.

I think HomeDepot must be getting weary of all my returns, a weekly occurence.

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