Whole House Water Filter - Part Two

When we last left the Payson house, the Pelican water system was in place but not connected to the house water. Will it be connected this weekend? Will it work? Will it have leaks? Read on to see what happens in the next episode of our filter blog.

At the beginning of each year, Mike's company has mandatory online training sessions each employee must complete to be up-to-date with company policies. And with each new year of training sessions, the company gives a deadline for when the training must be completed, which is usually the end of June or July. To be sure all managers look good to their bosses, each level then mandates when their group must complete the training. Mike's boss told his people last week that their training must be done by the end of January. Quite a change from June or July. There are 12 training sessions totaling almost eight hours of work time, so Mike decided to do the training remotely from Payson and went up Thursday night in order to make the January deadline. He spent Friday doing his training and some other work and then was done and already at the house for the weekend.

Now on with the project. We waited until Saturday to install the water connection to give us a full day in case any issues came up. We shut off the valve in the pantry and, to be safe, the main water line at the street. Mike removed the current loop line and the extra brass nipple connector that was needed for the previous loop connection. He installed the new adapters to the house lines and, once that was done, we turned on the main water line. No leaks in the current valve connection at this point - good start. Now he measured and cut the blue pex pipes that would connect to those house adapters and made the last couple of crimps. After Laurie double-checked that all the crimps were in place and secured, we turned on the pantry valve and filled the new lines. There were no jets of water spraying all over - Woohoo! So far so good.

Making the final crimps (a little blurry, Laurie wanted action shot)

The water valve turned on and no major leak issues

Our new whole house water filter system and connections

Before turning on the house water, Mike re-read the installation guide to be sure of our next step. He did not completely catch the part that the filter tank was supposed to be in bypass mode (special valves to take it out of the water flow) leaving only the conditioner on. Similar to the filter tank, it needed to be flushed for a period of time. After the water was on, Laurie re-read the steps and brought this error to Mike's attention. We don't believe we damaged anything by running the water through the filter, but we put it into bypass mode right away. Now we began the flush of the conditioner tank. Water had to be run for five minutes at a high rate using the tub faucet and then for 60 minutes at a low rate using a sink faucet. While we were doing the flush, Mike kept checking the pipe connections for leaks and about 5-10 minutes in he found one, then a few minutes later number two and awhile after that number three showed up. The good news was they were all small leaks and none of them were in the crimp connections - hurray.

So we finished the flush and took the filter out of bypass. We were slightly concerned when water from the tub and toilets was dark (similar to when the filter tank was flushed) and could only assume it was due to the tank sitting for a week with water in it. Once we ran the water for a little bit, it all cleared up. So we spent the rest of the afternoon considering our options for the leaks. Mike went to Home Depot to get some items that he hoped would solve the problems. He bought some JB Weld for underwater leaks and some pipe dope. We decided to try the JB Weld first to see if it could stop these small leaks, but after applying it around the connections and letting it sit for a few hours - the leaks remained. So he removed all the JB Weld and went to the next step.

The 2nd option was to redo the adapter connections. This would not be an easy task as all the adapter fittings will not turn due to the crimp connections, but two of the leaks were on the filter tank connections which has special fittings that can be removed from the tank side and these were what the adapters connected to. So we shut off the house water and disconnected the two connectors from the tank. After all the water drained from the pipes (with quite a bit ending up on the floor), Mike was able to undo the connections to the adapters, rewrap the threads with pipe tape and add some pipe dope on top of the tape for double protection. The connections to the adapters were made and then attached back to the filter tank.

The third leak would be more difficult as it was in a threaded adapter to the pre-filter and there was no special connector that could be undone. Mike would need to cut two crimps on the small pex pipe going to that adapter, fix the adapter as he did with the tank, replace the pipe and then redo the crimps. However, since we had used up all our 1" crimp rings and Home Depot only sold them 25 to a bag (only need two), whereas Lowes has a five count bag, we decided to leave the third leak for the following weekend and let Mike get the rings in the Valley.

With that new work done and the decision made on the 3rd leak, it was time to test the lines again. We turned on the pantry valve and filled up the pipes again. At the beginning, there were no leaks, not even where the 3rd, unrepaired leak had been. Now it would just take time. Mike checked again in a a few minutes - still no leaks. After ten minutes, he found the 3rd leak had started again, but nothing from the two he fixed. After hours of re-checking the pipes, only that one leak remained and would be saved for another day.

Where our first two leaks were, now repaired with new tape and dope

Our third leak at a pre-filter connection, to be repaired later

Mike had to return to the Valley Sunday night for work Monday and picked up the crimp rings we needed once he got into town. We are now ready for the final chapter (hopefully).

Stats: 1 Home Depot trip; 0 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 1/19/16-1/24/16: $0
Remodeling expense to date: $52,629