Trailer plumbing

[mjr6550]

I spend last week learning about rural South Carolina plumbing. I went on a mission trip with a group of 28 people. We were working on three houses. I spent most of the week installing PEX and repairing/replacing drain pipes.

Trailer piping is pretty lousy to begin with, but with age and past repairs it was worse. No vent pipes through the roof. I assume the kitchen sink originally has a mechanical vent, but a previous group replaced the piping below the sink and did not include a vent. This 1-1/2? pipe ran about 30? to where the bathtub teed into it. About 4? of slope in 30?. The old trap assembly was still there, but no tub. It looked like there had been a mechanical vent there. No vent at the basin. The sink drain had blocked up so someone spliced in a tee and ran about 20 feet of pipe to drain the sink to the rear of the trailer.

First time I ever worked with PEX. I replaced all the polybutylene to the bathroom, clothes washer and water heater with PEX and used transition adapters for the polybutylene at the other piping and for new shutoff valves at a second bathroom. I crimped a lot of joints and ended up with one leak-I forgot to crimp a fitting on the main supply line.

You have to get creative sometime on these trips. We were in the middle of nowhere, but the house was supposed to be on public water. The owner called Monday to have it turned on and by Friday still not water. The neighbor had a 120-volt well pump running to a hose faucet. We used a garden hose and clothes washer hose to feed the system through the drain valve of the water heater to test the piping. No power either, so we ran the pump with a generator. Before we started replacing the piping I tried to air test the system. One of the tub faucet valve stems fired across the bathroom and hit the wall. I decided after that with all the hose clamps, tape, and repair couplings it was not worth trying to save much it the polybutylene.

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[Chad Fabry]

Looking at those photos affected me. It's hard to describe. I guess it makes me feel about the same as having some alien suck my life force out of me.

[kurt]

I thought that's been verified scientifically. Exposure to gap toothed jack legged idiocy.....dramatically reduces brain cognition. Advanced stages including dipping tobacco and drooling it into a plastic cup one carries with them.

It explains the general mental state of the average HI.

[Jim Baird]

...there but for fortune, you'uns, go yall and us.

[John Kogel]

Looking at those photos affected me. It's hard to describe. I guess it makes me feel about the same as having some alien suck my life force out of me.

They got you, too?

That who stretched your forehead?

That crawlspace reminds me of the leaking dishwasher that went into rinse cycle while the HI was trapped behind the axles. []

Hey, coulda been black water. That's worse.

[mjr6550]

I think down there duct tape is considered a professional repair. Three joints in the kitchen sink drain pipe (which had about 8 couplings) and one elbow in a 3" waste line had separated. No sign of any glue at those joints.

The drain pipe below the bathtub had dropped about 3 inches. The fix was to "screw" a male pipe thread adapter into the Tee and glue it without cleaning the crud off the pipe or supporting the pipe. Needless to say, it did not hold.

Also, is water an optional thing you live without when the temperature goes below freezing?

[Erby]

Duct tape is a repair in quite a few places.

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