Episode 006 1995 - 96 Season

| Plumbing Top Out | Window Treatments (design) | Electrical Rough-In | Toilet Repair | Steel Frame Rough-In | Dimmer Switch Installation | FHA Loans | |

To order a Video Tape, call 1-800-TO-BUILD and ask for Episode #006.


Plumbing Top Out

Al Carrell: Today we're going to talk about topping out plumbing. And in order to do it the right way, we've got the World's Funniest Plumber back, Ed del Grande.

Ed del Grande: Thanks, good to be back Al.

A.C.: Good to see ya!

E.D.: Oh, I'm having a ball.

A.C.: I have a question.

E.D.: Sure.

A.C.: This is a plumbing pipe...

E.D.: Yeah.

A.C.: ...but what is this loop thing here?

E.D.: Well, it's funny you call it a loop thing, because it's actually called a loop vent and how a loop vent works is it allows us to put a sink in a place where's there no wall to run a vent pipe up.

A.C.: Well you can just run the pipe up here. What's wrong with that?

E.D.: Well, what wrong with it, it'll be exposed, it'll be a very unsafe....

A.C.: Hey, got a great idea. We can take ribbon and wrap around there. Put flowers out there. It'll look like something great.

E.D.: That will look nice, but not in my home.

A.C.: One of a kind. All right. Well, so tell me about it.

E.D.: Well, how it works basically is, you know every fixture has to be vented.

A.C.: Ah-huh.

E.D.: If a fixture doesn't have a vent, it's like if you had a beer and you tried to drink it with your mouth over the entire bottle. It's just not coming out.

A.C.: I'll get it out.

E.D.: So, well, once we have the sink in place where we know it's going to go, we could use what's called a loop vent. And how this works, if we could go down here, the flood level rim of the sink, which is the water line of the sink, will be below the top of the vent. So basically, it has a constant air passage. When the sink drains, it will allow the back pressure to come up right in back of the water going down and push it right down the drain.

A.C.: Where's it getting the air from down underneath the foundation?

E.D.: Well, that's the next part of the loop vent. This goes down into the concrete...

A.C.: Ah-huh.

E.D.: ...and if you look way around the wall, it actually goes underneath the whole kitchen, up the wall, out into the atmosphere, gives us all the air we need.

A.C.: Oh yeah. And if you ever do have a problem, I see there's a clean out plug here.

E.D.: Well, you being a Super Handyman, you don't miss a trick, because right here that is the clean out. No matter how well you design a system, something can go wrong, and in this case if, let's say some debris or water got stuck in there, we can open up the clean out, suck out the water, clean out the debris and our vent works fine again.

A.C.: Okay. Let's go take a look in the bathroom.

E.D.: Sure.

A.C.: Okay Ed. I see the guys have got the shower all set in here.

E.D.: Yeah, we're all set. We have the pan installed, the drain is all set, so if you dumped water in here now the drain system would actually work fine with no problems at all.

A.C.: Hopefully.

E.D.: Hopefully, as long as we're not standing in a big puddle we know we did our job. What we have left, of course, is to put the walls, they can be either tiled or fiberglass. I believe on this particular job we will have some fiberglass walls, but if you look over there Al, you'll see the water lines are already run out...

A.C.: Ah-huh.

E.D.: ...and right back here is what we call the mixer valve. All this does basically is mix the hot and cold water together and give you a nice comfortable shower.

A.C.: And it all comes out up here.

E.D.: Comes up over there. In some cases, you may have a tub and shower valve, which has a little diverter and that would either divert the water down to the tub off of the shower and one valve could do both functions. But, this is a shower only.

A.C.: Okay. In this case though, we have a separate tub over here.

E.D.: Right. You can see it's a beautiful setup because we have actually a separate tub for soaking and you have your shower for, of course, just taking a regular shower.

A.C.: Yeah.

E.D.: Without having to worry about getting in and out of a tub.

A.C.: Yeah, this is man-made marble here and at some point they're going to have to drill holes in here to install the faucet.

E.D.: Right. Whenever you're dealing with a custom tub, there's so many different types of tub fillers out there, that the owner will pick out what they would like and we will drill the hole according to what the specs on the faucet say and if you look under there, we just connect our tub filler with the current water lines that are roughed in all ready.

A.C.: And you just use a power drill...a hole cutter up here.

E.D.: Right you get like a carbide bit, a very good hole saw. Remember, this is an expensive tub. You don't want to go in with a Sawz-All and just start hacking away at it.

A.C.: Right.

Episode 006 1995 - 96 Season

| Plumbing Top Out | Window Treatments (design) | Electrical Rough-In | Toilet Repair | Steel Frame Rough-In | Dimmer Switch Installation | FHA Loans | |

To order a Video Tape, call 1-800-TO-BUILD and ask for Episode #006.