When I pulled the PEX to extend from the Cabana to the shop, I noticed a small leak. This is nothing new for the Cabana. I have had more leaks there than anywhere else. Firstly because I did the plumbing myself, and secondly because it is all exposed with virtually no insulation. The second fact was the reason all the pipes in the Cabana are now PEX and not PVC like they were originally. Check out that story here.
The leak was on the hot water side just below where it enters the wall. This is good for two reasons, it is not leaking inside the wall, and I can actually get to it to fix it. While I was looking at it I also remembered that the toilet was leaking inside and that the kitchen sink was in BAD shape. The water in our neighborhood is from a local well that has been filtered through hundreds of feet of limestone. While this does make it clean and healthy, it also makes it significantly hard. The average lifetime of a water heater here without soft water is less than 8 years. The lime in the sink is actually starting to build up to have a rough surface and looks horrible against the stainless steel. I will be applying CLR to it since that miracle stuff actually works. The toilet was not damaged by the limestone, but the base cracked last time we had a freeze and we notice the crack after a lime deposit started forming under where it was leaking from on the base.
When I moved the water heater out of the attic and put it in it’s own special shed behind the cabana I also installed a water softener that i had picked up from a guy who posted it on Nextdoor for parts. For some reason when i installed it I only used the output from the softener as the input to the water heater. I left the rest of the cold side plumbing to come directly from the un-softened line. I can see now that it was a mistake. I will be re routing the cold water to come from a tee on the output from the water softener. This should allow me to keep all the faucets from clogging etc. I just need to see where to cut the beautiful layout (hodgepodge) of pipes to do it.
I need to replace the Tee on the closest white 3/4″ pex with just a 90ยบ from the lower to the right. Then run a pipe from the water softener in the closet on the right back to the white pipe in the top left of the second image. The leak is evident by the discolored sharkbite Tee fitting on the left with the red pipes going to it. I will replace that with a new fitting crimped more permanently with my new tool. I will also put some supporting clamps on the pipes to attach them to the under side of the Cabana to keep them from pulling apart just from their own weight. I may add some more insulation but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In the left picture you can see my previous attempt to keep the pipes from freezing with a large red lightbulb. (it didn’t work).
So now I have a plan I just need to get it done… maybe i’ll watch just one more video of people successfully crimping pex fittings first.
