Homeowner Forum / Plumbing / August 2003

Even though I've heard of heat pump water heaters that extract heat from the
air and a few that absorb heat from the ground, I've often wondered why
nobody has built (so far as I know) a heat pump water heater that extracts
it's heat from the waste water that goes down the drain. ...

I recall seeing a home improvement show that used a sort of a sleeve that should be used when drilling copper pipes through
the wood framing to prevent squeaks but I can't find them . The idea is to frill the hole slightly bigger , install this
sleeve and then slide the copper pipe ...

My elderly parents have mentioned that's it difficult to switch the
water between the tub and the shower because the diverter is too
stiff.  Their home was built in the early 60's and has the diverter
between the hot and cold taps.  The diverter rotates 180 degrees

Sewer Pipe Blasting, has anyone have any information on this type of
replacing a sewer line from a home to the city line at the street, without
digging up the complete line area.  ??

I'm looking for a vendor who can supply 25-foot long stainless steel
tubes / pipes for a "home improvement" project I'm working on. I'm
suspending a 24 x 40 foot fabric canopy horizontally over my swimming
pool. One (narrow) end of the canopy will be attached to the pipe

Is it true that dishwashers have to have a very low draining point as they
do not have the same pumping power as say a washing machine ? The reason I
ask is because the washing machine drains via the waste pipe directly under
the sink and I was just going to tee off into this, but ...

I recently started having an odd problem with my kitchen faucet. When I turn
the faucet on, either hot or cold, the flow is very slow intially, then it
sort of ramps up to normal flow. This is the only faucet in the house that
does this. It's only about 1-1/2 years old (out of ...

Hello All...
We just replaced the tank on a Crane toilet due to cracking around the
bolt-through holes.
The new tank comes with a nice new gasket to go around the drain hole but

i went to class today,, well this weekend..
the waste connection from an auto washer into a standpipe
drain (minimum of 2") shall connect to a branch drain, or
drainage stack a "minimum" 3"

Hi All,
I plan to install a pump to pull water from the lake to an old sink on
my dock. It will only be used as a fish cleaning station.
The faucet will not be turned off ,the power to the pump will be turned

We are looking into replacing out electric water heater with a tankless
gas model and it occurs to me that there is no reason we shouldn't be
able to also have it serve the electric hot tub also with a heat
exchanger of course to keep the spa water out of the domestic supply. We

I am working for a middle-scale plumbing & heating contractor in
Quebec. I am trying to ask my boss for a plumbing and heating
estimation software in order to increase efficiency. He want to know
how many products is suitable for us and the price.

In the winter time I would like to use my 1" lawn irrigation water
source to flood a skating rink located about 200 feet from the house.
If I ran a 1" hose out to the skating rink, but I had a smaller
diameter fitting in the middle of the run, would water volume be

I plan on moving my washer from it's present location in my cellar. My
question is how high can I safely go with the discharge hose and still have
the machine be able to pump it out?
Thanks,

Does anybody in here use Quickbooks (any version)? If so, how do you
like using it? Have you found a complimentary software package to
allow you dispatching, estimating for our particular field, etc? I'd
like to hear from you. If replying by email, remember to remove the