Sunday, March 18, 2012

Signs of spring

I can tell spring is near, as these just sprouted:


A shed with a washer & dryer will end up here soon.

Black is a water supply line. It's 1" poly (I think that's HDPE). Fittings are brass. It was a bit pricy, because every screw-on valve needed a barbed-to-threaded fitting between it and the hose. The barbed site was always 1", while the threaded side was 3/4". Funny trade sizes & all. It also branches to a couple other locations underground, including the RV hookup.

There's also a stop-and-waste valve in the ground under a "flowerpot", basically an irrigation control box. This will let me drain the other lines if we ever leave for the winter, to protect them against freezing. There's a foot or so of 6" scrap conduit as a riser in under the flowerpot, so I can reach down to the valve. Also, there's drain rock under the valve, for the water that drains.

List of plumbing fittings:

- barbed tee off the existing water line

- barbed to threaded to connect to the
- threaded stop-and-waste valve, and back to

- barbed to threaded

- barbed tee to supply the riser you see in the picture


- barbed to threaded to
- a temporary ball valve on the riser


- barbed tee to supply the RV hookup to the right and a future handwashing station to the left

- temporary plastic barbed plug on the end for the future handwashing station


- barbed to threaded at the RV hookup to a threaded ball valve hose bib



The grey is 1 1/2" conduit. That's the largest my subpanel will take, and it should be plenty. They are in pairs - power + phone. One pair will supply the structure. The other pair continues on to supply the RV. I seriously underestimated how many conduit fittings I would need. Despite buying extras just in case, I ran out & had to run to the store in the middle of the job.

- 14 sticks of 10' conduit. I went out of my way to find the kind with built-in bell ends so I didn't need extra couplings

- 9 90 degree bends + 1 45 degree bend (I think - this is from memory)
- lots of couplings!

We also got 5 yards of gravel (3/4" minus) which we used to fill the trenches and cover the ground to make things nice & neat.

Costs:

Excavation work + gravel + some plumbing fittings: $600
First trip to the hardware store for plumbing fittings: $90
Carl's Building Supply for conduit & fittings: $160
Second trip to hardware store for a few more fittings, both pluming & conduit: $60