BEL #386
I finished some repairs on the Basecamp Shower Shack today. I'll light the fire later this evening, and then we'll have hot water for the outdoor showers. This post may be a useful reference for future
Boots to fix up the shower shack, as it looks pretty much the same across both shower stalls (I repaired both today).
Two of the hot water fixtures were leaking somewhere. I tracked it down to some failing PEX elbows with screw-on collars with internal gaskets. Presumably these are easier to remove, which makes it useful for us to quickly install or remove the shower water handles during periods of cold weather.
When testing the water flow, here's where my trouble was noticed.
Removing the exterior panels behind the shower stalls, outside the building, reveals the PEX water lines. We're fixing the red/"hot" water lines today.
Whoops! When removing the panels behind the water line inserts that pass through the wall, I noticed this old wasps nest. Fortunately, it looked to be uninhabited. I decided to leave it there, as a way to discourage future nest-building.
Here's where the water line turns and then goes into the shower stall. We'll come back here soon.
I had to remove the pipe clamps so I could change-out the leaking elbow inside the shower stall. There's a specific tool for this, but a pair of tin snips works just as well.
In preparation for connecting the new plumbing connector, I cleaned the old pipe wrapping from the brass nipple.
I used the PEX pipe cutter and my trusty pocket knife to remove the pipe from the elbow fitting.
With the old pipe removed, things were ready for me to install a new section of PEX, and then clamp it in place.
I'm kind of annoyed with PEX pipe, actually. Seems like installation is made simpler. but repairs and renovations seem to generate a lot of waste. Anyway...
Pipe was cut to size (somewhere round 7" / 17.8cm) and I added two pipe clamps to the pipe on either side of the wall. The second one is a "spare," but also works to hold the pipe steady against the wall while I did the work.
New
thread wrap was added to the brass nipple of the shower assembly.
With the new section of pipe securely clamped to all the fittings, and the plastic collar screwed onto the brass nipple
(how many times might I fit that phrase into this one post...?), things were ready for testing.
I noticed that the new fitting worked well, but water was still slowly dripping more than I liked.
...But that was eliminated, thanks to some judicious application of plumbing wrenches. I tightened up all the "typical" plumbing fittings, and this seemed to solve all the leak problems.
Finally, I returned all the exterior panels to their proper places, and put all the tools away. The mangled PEX pipe and clip clamps made their way to our landfill cans.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!
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