Water Plumbing Re-route

On the left side of the room, I want to install the drywall on the bottom of the 1st floor ceiling joists to maximize height. There were three plumbing lines that were run below the bottom of the joists and would have to be re-routed. The H&C supply to the 1st floor bath (shown left) and an outside faucet run.

I elected to just shorten the vertical drops and run the cross runs tucked up between the joists (shown on left).

Over at the outdoor faucet feed, I drilled through the middle of the joist and ran the line through. (shown right)

For the bath supplies, I didn't feel like drilling holes in the joists, so I crossed over behind the center beam in an area that will be covered by a soffit for the ducting. The previous runs ran out straight, then crossed over under the joists.

I started around 8:30pm and it took about and hour and a half to get everything cut, dry fit and then glued into place. They recommend 2 hours for the CPVC glue to cure before pressure testing, so I digressed to watch a movie.

12:15am I head down there to turn on the water and although I had high hopes for my mad gluing skills, sure enough, I get back over to the area of work and water is already spraying… not a deluge, but a leak nonetheless. So I climb up on the ladder with a bucket to catch the spray (1/4 full with water from the previous draining efforts) to look around.

All of my glue joints had held, but one of the original joints had developed a pinhole spray. Figures that it was the one (and only) joint in the joist space above a heat duct… (hardest to get to). It's the one up behind the duct in the picture on the left. Yeah!!! The only root cause I can think of was that the joint flexed when I was cutting off the original section and the glue joint cracked. It causes me a little concerned about the stability of the rest of the plumbing in the house, but I guess pretending the risk isn't there is the best solution.

So I run over and turn off the water and head back to fix it…. 12:30am now. Back over at the ladder, I bump it and the pail of water balancing on the top step sailed all over me. So now I'm soaked, have a water leak, and there's a gallon of water on the floor running under my pile of 2x4's. I said some bad things.

Luckily, I had a few leftover elbows, so I was able to contort myself into the space with my mini hack saw to cut out the offending joint and replace it. Here's the fix on the right. I used two 45's because I had used all my 90° elbows.

I hit the sack at 1am, but of course, needed water in the AM. In a valiant attempt to stave off potential issues in the morning, I got back up at 3am to check it. All is well this time…save for a short night of sleep.