Soldando

Domingo 02 - Sábado 08 Feb   Sunday we did a good cleaning of our upstairs terraza with the pressure washer. Wanted it to be clean of the accumulated rain-speckled dust and cane soot when our crew had to work up there. Dan worked the pressure washer, whilst Carmen maneuvered a stiff bristled broom. The next good day for canefield burning will dirty it up again. The soot is not all bad – it makes a good fertilizer for our plants. Seems like we are seeing more cane on trucks that has not been field-burned. The refineries pay a  lower price when the leaves are with the cane.

Last week's concrete shelf work fixed the position for the new water heater, enabling Dan to drill the holes thru the wall for the various pipes.  At one point, when drilling the holes thru the walls, it required two hands inside at the very back of the corner cabinet, lying on the fixed upper shelf in the cabinet.  Once in there with the holes complete, the opening was so tight he just could not back out.  As he struggled to worm out of the tight space, Carmen had to grab him by the back of his belt and pull him out.  

Last week Dan worked soldando (soldering) up most of the sections of copper pipe/fittings to make the connections to the new heater.  Now before proceeding we had to remove the existing stainless steel sink, to provide access for final assembly and re-route the cold water to supply both the sink and the new water heater. Not as easy as it sounds. The back lip of the sink was under the wall tiles and there was a bump of concrete on the front of the hole in the countertop that had to be chipped off before the sink would slide/lift out at an angle that cleared the backsplash tiles. Hopefully with the reinstall and new caulking, there will be no more water leaks into the undersink cabinet. While sink was out, Carmen painted the cabinet interior white to make it brighter. She is considering painting inside the rest of the kitchen cabinets. She  also scraped, sanded and painted a bottom wall in our small "powder room."

Dan pulled out our cook stove to connect the propane to the new hot water heater installed on the front porch. The last hole drilled, thru the brick wall by the kitchen range, was for the flexible gas line, extended with a tee from our kitchen stove propane shutoff valve. We took advantage of having the stove pulled out to clean the grease off the stove sides. Also touched up with appliance paint on the sides of the stove where it had been scratched from sliding it in and out of it's space. 

Our crew of four were here at 7am monday. They worked three days this week to finish all their jobs. The crew removed the forms for the concrete shelves on the porch outside of the kitchen, and then tiled the the surfaces. Luis certainly does beautiful  tile work. The round hole in the shelf  thru which the heater flue will pass was plumbed and a matching hole was cut thru the roof directly above it.  Heri had the job of patching some corner spots where the rejas (steel security bars) had loosned up at the corners.  Carmen caught him about to paint one spot that he had not yet sanded smooth!  The whole crew worked on sealing up the other side of the south party wall.  At the end of the last day for the crew, Luis, Alfonso and Dan connected up the new water heater and tightened all the threaded joints to stop a few leaks.

Unfortunately Dan had a dental appointment tuesday morning and then wednesday we both had our doctor appointment (cita). We hated to be away, always so many questions to be answered by Dan, but, that is the way of life. We do trust them, so that is not a problem. We just missed some of the time with them. They are such happy fellows full of smiles and singing, even at the end of their ten hour days. Amazing!

With the sink out, Dan was able to finish up the new water line runs. One problem we wanted to fix, was to reverse the cold and hot sides, which were originally plumbed to the wrong sides.  Since the two supply pipes and the 2" drain line were installed very close to each other, with the copper pipes extending only a few inches out of the wall surface (with compression x npt valves attached there), working space was tight. It all worked out fine, with the new pipes up close against the back wall, one installed over the drain pipe and the other below.  Bringing the cold water over to the other side necessitated a lot of fittings (and 18 solder joints within 8" between the heater supply shutoff and the supply to the sink). He reused the sink valves, only having to buy a new shutoff valve and a (compression x compression) union to connect the cold water to the new lines.  The final solder joints were in the back of the corner cabinet where the lines right-angled thru to the corner of the porch.  He had to use a cookie sheet for protecting the wooden shelves and the electric conduit strung back there while using the torch.

The rest of our week seemed pretty quiet. Carmen worked digging up the soil around the new garden pasarela.  We got the the sink back in, all nicely caulked. We both worked and got the 4" flue pipes up thru the roof.  Next the big moment of turning on the water heater -- up to this point we had been running just cold water thru the lines. The electric ignition did not work – we will have to call a technician to repair it under its warranty. Dan took the burner cover off while Carmen held the match, and the pilot did ignite. We were happy to see that there were no water leaks under the sink and we had hot water! That is, until we went out front later to find hot water on the porch!  Oh darn, a leaky solder joint (the only one out of more than 50) -- not evident until the hot water had worked it's way past the paste flux. Thankfully it was outside.

Needless to say, the joint would have to be removed, fittings un-soldered, cleaned and then re-soldered. But, Dan had planned ahead and thankfully installed threaded unions (just so the heater could be removed without disturbing any solder joints) so the next day it was a relatively quick thing to detach that 3/4" section (between the heater and the flexible hot water line connected to the pipe going thru the wall) and make the fix.  It is good not to have to wait a long time for hot water at the kitchen sink anymore!   Back to washing a couple dishes at a time instead of stacking them up until there were enough to make the wait (for hot water from the distant main heater) worthwhile.