deeper and deeper in

Have you ever had one of those projects where it starts out something simple like, oh, change a flat tire but by the time you are done you've installed a brand new transmission? I'm starting to get the feeling I'm halfway down the road on this one.

Last week it got chilly for a couple of nights. Andrea requested heat and I figured, no time like the present to check out our new boiler. Well, I discovered that while MOST of the radiators worked great, the one in the baby's room wasn't heating up at all. Hrm. That's kind of a required area as far as heating goes. So I try the valve. No knob. Hrm. No biggie, I take the knob from the radiator in the bedroom and put use it on the radiator in the baby's room. After much heaving and hoeing I finally got it to move just a pinch in the direction of OPEN. Huh. Wait, what's that? a drip of water? another one...a leak. Close the valve! So I crank on it theo ther way and it goes a little bit in that direction...but it still leaks. Ugh. So now I've gone from no heat to a leak...

The obvious answer is "Fix the valve" but since the valve barely turns as it is, well, I figure we might as well go and just replace the valve. After all, this is in the baby's room and i want everything working tip top not half-assed. So I go to Home Depot with pictures on my laptop any everything and find their plumbing specialist. "Oh sure no problem, you just replace the valve. No problem. Shut off the intake and you get no water coming out. You fix it, sure." (btw he's mexican or something. I say, "But what about all of the water inside the radiator?"

"Oh yes, I see your question. Very true." So I thank Yoda and buy a pipe wrench, the biggest steam radiator valve they have, and a radiator key (needed one anyways). it would seem to be a simple operation. Well, anyways, I go down and turn off the boiler, shut of the gas, and set the thermostat to the lowest setting (35 deg). Then I close off all of the water valves I can find (making careful note of which valve was ALREADY off) and then open up the boiler's drain outlet. Luckily, it has threads and I can attach a hose to it and run it to the utility sink in the laundry room. So I drain that out. Then, after dinner I start working on the valve. yup, there's still plenty of water in that radiator. Being that there's pretty low clearance beneath the radfiator, I'm using these short, sandwich-sized tupperware containers to catch the water and dump it into my 4 gallon bucket. Did that for about 15 minutes and thought to myself, "I have a shopvac, what the hell am I making such a big mess with this silly system for?" So then I used the tupperware to catch the water but then sucked it up using the shop vac asa sorta secondary reverse water pump...and after about 20 minutes and two shop-vacs of water later the gush was just a drip drip drip.

So, now i have the valve disconnected from the radiator. No problem...however, I can;t seem to get the valve disconnected from the pipe that sticks up out of the floor. Sigh.

This project started as troubleshooting a cold radiator and now I've moved on to replacing plumbing fittings...next thing I'll be replacing all of the pipes o the house. By the end of this I expect I'll have a new bathroom installed as well as Central Air.

It is starting to feel like this old home should have come with a Home Depot line of credit as well.

Anyway, I'm attempting to enlist my next door neighbor and his handy-man friend to help me out with this. We'll see how it goes.


Oh, and tomorrow is my 31st b-day. in 20 minutes, I'm officially over 30. I will have passed the last of the events listed in the header of my blog. i guess its all down hill from here.

interesting side note:
Google "replace radiator valve"" and you'll find that almost all hits will be within the UK. Weird! Better make sure you have the right sized spanner!