The Handyman's Dream: Move Water Lines

Another job to be completed before the basement could be braced involved moving some plumbing. The main water line that ran from the basement floor up and straight over to the wall needed to be moved. There was not the requisite 4" of space between the pipes and the wall. (That is how much space the I-Beam will occupy once the braces are in place.) Even if the lines were 4" away from the wall, I don't really like the idea of having water lines run in an exterior wall - especially in a province where -40 is a common winter temperature. I recall, not so fondly, spending a large part of my 2003 Christmas break repairing such a problem in our last house, where the pipes froze, burst, and flooded the basement. Or part of it anyway.

I lack in plumbing prowess, though I did pick up a few pointers watching our water softener being installed a few months ago. The main thing I learned -- use a lot of heat. A lot. More then you'd think. Seriously.

Though I knew my new "heat it hotter" method was bound to succeed, I still enlisted the help of two handier-then-usual friends. Luckily, three showed up, the third having total plumbing prowess, fresh off a multi-year renovation of an early 1900s house in Toronto.

Since we were moving the main line, I decided I would replace the 50 year old shutoff valve that could give up the ghost any time. I wasn't sure exactly how everything would come apart, so I decided to do a Canadian Tire run mid-repair. The City was scheduled to turn off the water at the street at 11:00am. Around 10:30 we turned off the main in the house, and began disassembling - the job involved moving the water heater as well.

Eleven o'clock came and went, as did 11:30, and I called the city, only to be reassured that the water would be shut off. Then a knock at the door. It was a friendly city-worker, asking me to check if the water was off. I checked, and told him "No." He shook his head, returned to the outside valve, and returned a few minutes later. "Now?" I checked again. "No." "Well, I can't turn it off. Someone will be out next week to fix it."

Pardon? Next week? What? But my protests were in vain -- apparently the shutoff was broken. Kind of begs the question - what would they have done if I had a pipe break and the only shutoff keeping thousands of litres of water out of my basement did not work? I guess I should consider myself lucky that they caught it when they did.

That said, catching it when they did was not helping my plumbing job. However, four heads being better then one, we made a plan, and decided to add another shutoff into the main line just after the old one. We couldn't wait until the city fixed their shutoff because the guy bracing the basement was coming the next day.

I won't lie to you -- it was not pretty. We heated it hotter, a lot, and ended up cleaning up a lot of burnt pipe. Funny how that never happened to the water softener installer...

While two of us worked on moving the main, the other two ran pipes to move the water softener. Since we couldn't cut the main pipe that comes up from the floor, we had to use a 45 degree elbow to change the direction the meter aimed. Here's a close up of the finicky messing around we had to do. Note the old shutoff, new shutoff, and lovely 45 degree elbow: