Three plumbers over 4 years have said they couldn’t do it. WE think we’ve done it. It took some creative work and in one case manufacturing (via silicone glue and nested pipes) our own adapter, but we have gotten the ‘irreplaceable’ vertically joined elbow (a 3 way with a right angle) out of the works (reminds me of Jordin Kare’s filk about the engineer who designed a part that couldn’t even be cast…)—and routed the tub drain in a gentle horizontal U back to the vertical wastewater (overflow drain) pipe and on to the iron pipe that connects to the main drain. This gets that right-angle turn in the no-longer-manufactured miracle-connector out of the picture and should give us a trouble free (and highly replaceable) connection.
This all started two days ago when poor Jane went to take a relaxing bath, tried to open the drain, and the overflow plate/drain control fell off in her hand leaving a honking great hole in the tub.
It looks so civilized now. If this pipe route works, we’ll have done what several plumbers refused to tackle.
If this writing gig doesn’t pan out you two can hire yourselves out as handywomen 😉
82Eridani is correct. Coincidentally, the next big project at our house is a complete bathroom re-model. You’re hired if you want the job! Of course the commute would be intimidating since we are on the east coast. 🙂
Ah, plumbing. My girlfriend’s 106 year old Queen Anne is a nightmare. I had similar overflow problems at her place but my access was through the facia board under the roof eves. 2 stories up. Threaded brass, galvanized iron and copper all mixed up. The saving grace is that these pipes are not under pressure or none of our kluges would work.
I salute you.
Phil Brown
Lol, Philbrown, you get the cake, for sure: we had convenient basement access: standing on one of the salt tubs for the marine tank sump gave us a nice warm, dry access. Plus the access panel in Jane’s closet.
The brass-copper-iron mess was what we had. And the OUTER diameter of 1 and 1/2 inch pipe can vary wildly according to what the pipe is made of. To replace that brass, I was about ready to pipe the thing with spaflex—which we used on the marine tank downflow—
But a thinwalled 11/2″ did it—at the brass end; but was too flimsy to serve on the tub end. After we lost the threads on the tub shoe (where the bottom drain screws in) to one misaimed screw-in—we decided the thicker pipe was a must. But IT wouldn’t mate to the thin-wall we needed to fit into the iron pipe, ie, replacing a brass pipe.
So Jane came up with a brilliant solution. The PVC ‘extension’ pipes have a molded flange at the top. She dropped a slightly longer thin-wall 1 and 1/2 inch pvc pipe into a ‘fatter’ 1 and 1/2 inch thickwall, where of course its fall all the way through was stopped by the flange covering the gap at the top. She then flipped it over, poured silicone glue into the gap between the two pipes where they overlap and—viola!—the part no store had: an adapter to mate thickwalled PVC with an iron pipe cast to receive a thinwalled brass pipe or thin-walled PVC.
Yay for kludges! You DON’T want to see the mess that’s under my double kitchen sink; it’s a glued together hodgepodge of PVC drainpipe, mainly because the connector for one of the drains has lost its threads and I’m planning to completely redo that sink anyway within the next couple of years. It’s a heavy gauge stainless steel sink, though, which makes it worth salvaging if possible.
When we redid the kitchen counters, we tossed the old iron/porcelain sink and got one that came with its own faucets, including one of those pull-down spray items. I swore I wouldn’t have one, expecting they’d break fast, but this one has been great, never fails to retract, and makes it a whole lot more convenient to rinse out, say, a five gallon bucket.