Man Cave Plumbing

My house was plumbed by Mario Brothers on LSD.

I couldn't even put in to words how ridiculous some of the plumbing was. The issue with  my Man Cave, though, was three pipes - a cold feed to the water heater, the hot return, and a gas line - running the length of the room down the center. With a  ceiling height of 81", my choices were to box out the pipes and risk broken skulls, or move the plumbing.

I wasn't too concerned about the water pipes. When I ignored the mess that was there and focused on the solution, the problem wasn't as bad as I had feared. I've even moved gas lines before, but for the sake of my wife's concerns (and a hassle I wanted to avoid) I decided to start by hiring a plumber to move the gas line.

I ended up using a company I found through ServiceMagic called Fluid Plumbing. They gave me a quote of $400 to move the pipe about three feet closer to the steel support beam that runs the length of my house. I couldn't have been happier. The tech showed up with an assistant, and in a timely, courteous, professional, and clean manner, completed the work in about 3 hours. I HIGHLY recommend these guys if you live in the Bucks/Montgomery county area.

Once the gas line was safely moved, I could begin work on moving the water lines myself.

I decided to go with PEX and SharkBite connectors for the water lines. I installed a new expansion tank on the water heater, a ball valve on the hot line out of the water heater, and was able to remove about 70 feet of unnecessary copper pipe.

The picture above shows the 3/4" feed with a new tee that runs to the water heater and a 1/2" ninety that connects the hot return with the rest of the house. These are both right along-side the gas line that was moved.

The SharkBite product gets high marks from me. A bit expensive, but the time saved was well worth the extra money spent.

The only bad thing that happened was I couldn't get the hot water heater started again. After several frustrating attempts, I called Fluid back and asked their tech to come out and get it started for me. They arrived within minutes, got it started immediately (which made me feel like an idiot) and charged me nothing. (I'm getting verklempt.)

I was able to start the framing once the plumbing part was completed.