Originally posted on 2018-10-05
As mentioned in the previous post, we have had some fun with one thing leading to another. This is to show how things in the house is connected, and how
moving our kitchen has completely spiraled.
Wondering about the pump to drain the sink lead to us digging up the septic tank.
I have already mentioned in a previous post that we dug up the septic tank to confirm that the pump was needed to push the water up to the septic tank. What I did not previously mention that after we dug up the
we looked around to see where the most likely spot for the septic bed would be, and unfortunately, we concluded that it was likely under the west garage (or at least not far enough from it to be up to code). We managed to get the permit that was taken out to install the tank in 1969, and have confirmed that is the case, meaning they did not get a permit to build the garages. The upside is that since it’s already there we are not required to fix it. The downside is we have a plan to add a bathroom and that will trigger the need to fix this issue.
Finding the septic tank triggered the plan to move the kitchen.
Realizing there was not a good way to keep the kitchen where it is and be rid of the annoyance of having to turn on a pump every time we needed to empty the sink is why we decided to move the kitchen, combined with we are having to have a filtration system installed.
Moving the kitchen prompted pulling up the floor.
To get plumbing to the new kitchen, we had to pull up the floor in the western room, which brought attention to all the problems found in the post All Rotten on the Western Front as well as the plan to insulate the crawl space while the floor was up anyway. If you haven’t read that post yet, please do. I am glossing over a lot right now.
Plumbing the kitchen leads to ripping apart the bathroom.
We figured since we were running pex pipe for the new kitchen, we may as well plan for the future bathroom upstairs as well as run new pipe to the current bathroom & laundry room. This decision led to us completely ripping apart the bathroom as the toilet had rust build-up and it was leaking, causing more rot. Full post on the bathroom renovation next week.
Pulling up the bathroom floor lead back to the septic tank.
As previously mentioned, we have a plan that we know will trigger us needing to deal with the septic tank. We currently plan to kick that can down the road and deal with it sometime next year, however we found the pipe leading out to it under the bathroom floor and it’s not big enough. So when we fix the septic tank, we will need to replace that pipe. That means we are putting a temporary floor into the bathroom now, and will tile it after the septic has been dealt with.
Open walls to fix plumbing lead to chasing electrical.
The open walls showed us the electrical wire, which to simply look at it was a little confusing. We managed to chase them down and decided to separate the bathroom from the laundry room and hall. This also lead us to changing the light switch and putting in an exhaust fan. As you can see, we have been going in a few circles and what started as a renovation for a single room has lead to about half the house being torn up.
Update on Heating Challenges
One good connection we had out of all this, is deciding what to do about heating the house. We found out that the company we’re using to get our water filtration system also does heating, so we brought them back in to get a second opinion on going to forced air propane. They suggested a boiler system, which we have decided to go with, however, they said they would like to install the boiler before the water filtration system, so we are still living off of bottled water at the moment.
Huron The Lake 