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After some hesitation, I decided to tackle the plumbing myself.
Preston, my helper, had experience fixing the plumbing in his
house, and after all, how difficult could it be? Off I trotted
to Lowe's, and found a salesperson in the plumbing department.
"Can you help me?" I asked. "I need some piping
and fixtures."
"What kind?"
"Plastic."
He must have groaned inwardly, but smiled politely and asked,
"What kind of plastic?"
What kind of plastic? From some deep recess in my memory, I dredged
up, "Oh, uh. . . PVC." With obvious relief, he guided
me to the correct aisle, and started dropping parts into my shopping
cart as I explained my plumbing plans. Then we got to the hot
water heater, and suddenly it turned out that I couldn't use PVC
with hot water, but had to use CPVC instead. So, after unloading
all the PVC stuff, off we went to the CPVC section, and into the
cart went tees, elbows, couplings, cut-offs, reducing bushings,
pipes, and assorted other items.
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| With my vastly expanded experience, I now realize that there's
an alphabet soup of plastics for plumbing, including ABS, PVC, CPVC,
Qest, and PEX. ABS is used primarily for drainage, and PVC can't
handle hot water or high pressures. CPVC (which stands for chlorinated
polyvinyl chloride, in case you wanted to know), is easy to work
with, withstands hot water and pressure, but I'm told it bursts
readily under freezing conditions. Qest and PEX are the way to go
if freezing is a problem, and I actually considered using Qest,
until I saw the large size of the compression fittings it requires. |
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CPVC plumbing is assembled with a cement that "welds"
the pieces together. The pieces need to be treated first with
Purple Primer, a mixture of organic solvents that must have close
to zero surface tension, since it virtually jumps out of the can
when you open it, and runs over everything. You apply the primer
and the cement with built-in brushes, to both parts of a joint,
and quickly twist the parts together. The adhesive seizes almost
immediately, as I discovered when I made a mistake and tried to
separate the pieces. The cutter shown in the photo was well worth
its $10 price tag. It cuts the pipe at right angles and leaves
clean edges. The alternative is to use a hacksaw, and spend time
deburring the edges. The cutter also made it easy to "nibble"
short pieces off the pipe to get it just the right length.
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Completing the job required
several --- no, let's be honest, numerous--- trips to the local
hardware store, and I discovered that not all CPVC fittings are
created equal. Notice the different shape of these two elbows; they
were bought at different stores, and I didn't catch the difference
until after I had installed them and realized that the pipe on the
left was further away from the board than the pipe on the right.
(See what I mean about that Purple Passion ---I mean Primer--- getting
on everything?) |
| My greenhouse was to have a sink, and I had planned carefully
for all the parts I'd need to supply both hot and cold water, when
suddenly, the morning we were to begin the plumbing, I realized
that I also needed a tap for a hose! In my preoccupation with the
sink, I had totally forgotten the hose! Well, that introduced a
slight twist to the proceedings because I also wanted to have warm
water for the hose. Here's how my final plumbing scheme turned out:
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It looks pretty simple, doesn't it? For the life of me, I can't
figure out why it took us a week to install . . . . Well,
for one thing, deciding where to locate the hose bib wasn't easy.
I certainly didn't want it sticking out into the aisle where I
would keep banging into it, yet it needed to be convenient. We
agreed that under a bench would be the best place, but how to
attach it sturdily? We solved the problem nicely, I think, but
it did add another day to the process.
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Here's how we installed the hose bib, which is attached to the
plywood board. The plywood is mounted between the side boards
of the bench. The wire shelving that forms the top of the bench
has been removed; the U-shaped cut in the plywood accomodates
lips of the shelving. You can see the water heater near the top
of the photo, and the sink is out of sight beyond that.
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Here's the view from the other side.
We couldn't run the pipes straight across the plywood because the
elbows leading into the hot/cold mixer on the other side wouldn't
allow the pipes to lie flat, so we ran them across the upper part,
thickened by adding a second layer of plywood. |
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Here's how the final result looks, from the actual business angle.
It's located at about the middle of the greenhouse, and so far
has been convenient to use. I don't like coiling the hose on the
floor, but haven't figured out a better arrangement yet.
I've been wetting the soil in the raised bed since finishing
the plumbing, and have discovered that six gallons of hot water
doesn't last very long! However, I can cut back the proportion
of hot water; I don't really need warm water for my plants,
just enough heat to take the chill off.
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The photo below shows the sink, water heater, and bench with
the wire top in place. (This bench is from Charley's). I didn't
like the spindly legs that came with the sink, and built a wooden
stand instead; the stand is placed on a piece of fieldstone for
stability, and the water heater sits on bricks. In his book Greenhouse
Gardener's Companion, Shane Smith recommends installing a
dirt trap for a sink's drain. This sounded like a good idea to
me, but nowhere could I find such a creature. The closest I came
was when one plumbing supply house suggested a grease trap and
offered to sell me a 50-gallon one. I declined, and simply buried
the flexible drain pipe under the gravel.
The butcher block to the right of the sink came
from an old dishwasher top; I had hoped it would be large enough
to provide a work area for potting and such, but clearly it isn't.
Instead, I plan to cover the wire top of half the bench with a
sheet of formica. Although the tool shed is close by, I quickly
realized that I needed some storage space in the greenhouse, and
started by installing a wire shelf above the sink, and a drawer
under the bench. But I suspect I'll need to add more as I start
to work in here.
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There's still a lot of caulking to do, and a second bench to
treat with polyurethane before installing it, but with the electricity
and plumbing finished, I decided it was time for a Grand Opening
Party, which I coupled with a celebration of the Solstice on December
21st. I had to have some kind of plant in there, and what better
than a Norfolk Island Pine, decorated with the tools of the trade?
(I didn't actually plant it, just sank the pot in the soil.)
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The photo above shows the flooring I put down on top of the gravel
in the areas of foot traffic. This is called anti-fatigue ring
matting, and is meant for use in commercial kitchens. It comes
in 3-foot squares that snap together, and in various thicknesses
and colors. The catch is that colors are available only in the
grease-proof variety of matting, which is (of course) much more
expensive than the regular version, which comes only in black.
Despite the increased cost, I decided I really wanted the terra-cotta
look, and am pleased with my decision, as, it seems, is Nimrod:
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Well, winter weather has arrived, and I can't work on the outside
of the greenhouse any more. The cracks that need caulking will
be sealed with duct tape for the time being, and putting the stone
veneer on the kneewall will have to wait. I might put in the pool
during the cold weather, but that too may come later. According
to the Farmer's Almanac, it's going to be a short winter;
let's hope so!
But I was unable to wait any longer to plant something in the
Taj Mahal, and sowed some lettuce, arugula, corn salad, and peas
a couple of days ago. No, nothing has come up yet, but I do check
frequently. I'm also deeply immersed in the wonderful year-end
activity of poring through the seed catalogs, dog-earing every
other page. With a greenhouse, my horizons of possible plants
has suddenly expanded, and I'll probably not have time to plant
everything I'm going to order --- but what fun it is to dream!
A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!
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