Ask This Old House

Kevin

Today on "Ask This Old House"...

Richard

This house in Virginia was built in the '90s with a type of pipe that could burst and flood the house. I'll tell you what it is and how we fix it.

Mauro

I'll cover your choices for drop cloths.

Kevin

And we'll share more home-inspection nightmares.

Scott

This is just a mess of wires, and only thing I can say is at least they used a junction box.

Door creaking

Tom

You hear that? This door's really squeaky. I'll show you a few different ways to make it quieter.

Ross

And I'll explain what indoor air quality is and how to improve it. And these pollutants are coming from everywhere -- the cleaning products under our sink, paints, carpets, furniture.

Richard

Are you Deb?

Deb

I am. Hi, Richard. Welcome to Richmond.

Richard

It's nice to be here. I don't think I've ever been in this city before. It's beautiful.

Deb

Thank you, I'm so glad you're here.

Richard

How long you been here?

Deb

I built the house in 1991, and the reason I e-mailed you is because about a year ago, in the winter, my pipes froze, and when the plumber came, he went under the house and came out and said, "You have polybutylene pipes, and I'm not gonna touch them."

Richard

You had no idea you had P.B.

Deb

I didn't. Richard. I got your e-mail. I brought a sample of this. This was the -- This was the pipe that was the craze in the mid-'70s. It was polybutylene. It was flexible. You could fish it anywhere. The connections were easy to make. But they found that, over time, the connections could fail, and the pipe could actually fail. And so, by 1995, it was outlawed, so what --

You built this in '91. Deb

Yes.

Richard

So you were right at the end of the era of polybutylene. And they used to do it in a couple different places in the country. One was the Pacific Northwest, and the other was right here -- the Mid-Atlantics. So I'm sure a lot of your neighbors have this stuff, too.

Deb

Yes, they do, and once I learned what I have, I talked to several neighbors, and they've had their pipes replaced, as well, because they had some failures of the pipe inside the walls

that they didn't know about. Richard

Right.

Deb

And then some of them, they had leaks

that they actually saw. Richard

That's the thing. These fittings can be up inside the wall and just drip, drip, drip, and, seriously, you wouldn't even notice it. So, really, the only way now is to get rid of it. So what we've done is we've actually found a local plumbing guy who's gonna help us

get that old P.B. out of here. Deb

Excellent.

Richard

Travis should be here, I hope.

Deb

Yes, he is. Come on in.

Richard

This house is beautiful inside, too, Deb.

I love it. Deb

Thank you, Richard.

Richard

And there's our friend Travis. How are you, sir?

Travis

Good. How are you, Richard?

Richard

You got a little jump on us in here?

Travis

I did, and, you know, this thing couldn't be any easier to re-plumb.

Richard

Good.

Travis

We have an unfinished crawlspace here, which allows us to access everything from underneath without doing -- minimal damage in here.

Richard

Which is not the typical case. I've seen these jobs where we got a bathroom over here and a washing machine up here, and you end up opening up walls and ceilings, and it's really painful. So, take us through how you're gonna attack this thing.

Travis

Okay, well, we're gonna start over here in our kitchen. We're gonna access it through the bottom of the cabinet here.

Hot and cold. Good. Travis

Hot and cold. Mm-hmm. We have our ice maker over here, which we'll access up through here.

Richard

Okay,

two down. Travis

Two down. Like I said, most of our fixtures are on this floor.

Richard

Great.

Travis

We have our laundry room here, which we can access from our crawlspace.

Richard

Nice, nice, nice.

Travis

And our first-floor bathroom here.

Richard

Okay, full bath here. So that just comes up through the floors. Great. But there's a bathroom above us.

Travis

Yes, sir,

there is. Richard

So you can see -- Oh, here's the P.B. right here,

Deb. Deb

Yeah.

Richard

So, it doesn't actually look too bad. It's the better connections of the two that they had, but, so you'll be able to actually re-pipe this entire house with only opening up just what we see right here.

Travis

Yes,

sir. Richard

That's pretty amazing. Let's get the water turned off. I'm ready.

Travis

Alright. Richard, here's our crawlspace door.

Richard

Crawlspace? We don't have a lot of those

where I come from. Travis

Yes, sir. Everything here in Richmond is typically a crawlspace.

Richard

Well, I'll let you go in.

Travis

Yes,

sir. Richard

Well, what do we got?

Travis

Okay, what we have here is our polyethylene line

that comes from the street. Richard

And that's good news, 'cause that's a type of plastic we don't have to change, so we don't have to dig up your front lawn.

Deb

Great,

thank you. Travis

Our main shutoff, which then transitions to the P.B.

Richard

Right. Alright, so, you ready to shut that off right now?

Travis

Yes, sir.

Richard

Alright, water's off. I see an outside faucet here. Why don't you throw that in the bed over there?

Deb

Okay.

Richard

Water's coming on. Alright, so we're gonna go open up the faucets inside, break the vacuum, alright?

Travis

Okay, Richard. We're gonna begin tearing things out.

Richard

Alrighty. Alright, so, here is the polybutylene we're taking out of the building -- flexible, seems terrific. And here's what we're putting back in. This is a PEX tubing -- cross-linked polyethylene. P-E-X.

Deb

Why would you take out one plastic pipe and replace it with another plastic pipe?

Richard

You know, although they look similar, they are not the same. This is a tougher pipe, and it's been proven in the world markets. Since the '70s, it's been used for radiant floor heating first, and, for all those years, it's put into concrete slabs, and it gets heated, and it gets cooled, and it really is in a tough environment, and it lasts, and it's been safely used for 25 years in the United States for potable water. You know, when I mention metal to you, right, you know the difference between steel and tin. You know steel is stronger. With plastics, we all lump them together, and, really, there's a different chemistry inside of each one of these. So, the best way to test them is to take them back to, really, the way they were when they were first manufactured -- this amorphous state. So, I've got a heat gun right here, and this is made up of oil-based resins, hydrogen and carbon, that, when we heat them up, it'll start to soften it. Okay, so, now it's softened now. Now watch what happens when I pull it apart. It has very little side-wall resistance, and it just pulls apart like taffy, okay? Now, so that's a simple plastic. This is the PEX, and what's happened is those molecules that used to be just long strings are now cross-linked much like a chain-link fence. Now, see how it's turning clear?

Deb

Yes.

Richard

Now very clear?

Deb

Yep.

Richard

So, now, unlike the simple plastic, if I give extraordinary pull... Watch how much harder it is to pull this apart....it's as if I've cut it with a knife. All pipes are not created equal. Isn't that something?

Deb

It really is.

Richard

The pipe is only part of the story. Let me show you the fitting connection. Travis has run new PEX to replace the polybutylene from the crawlspace to the bathroom on the second floor, and now he has to make some connections with fittings. For those, PEX sleeves are installed on the outside of the tubing. This tool will expand the inside dimension of the tubing and the sleeve. The expanded tubing allows the fitting to stick inside, but only for a few seconds, because the tubing and the sleeve have a memory and will return to their original dimension, which makes a watertight connection. Well, this was a very good day. In another couple hours, you're gonna get the water back on, right?

Travis

Absolutely, and, Deb, all you'll have is a few drywall repairs and a little bit of paint touch-up.

Deb

Oh, I can take care of that. Thank you.

Richard

This really was a great reminder for a lot of people. You know, many people, like you, have P.B. pipe in there. They don't even know it until it either leaks or they go to sell the house, and the home inspector tells them, so -- But you're in good shape for the next 100 to 150 years, alright?

Deb

Oh, thank you for coming to Richmond.

Richard

It was my pleasure. He did all the good work. Thanks,

my friend. Travis

Thank you.

Richard

Good job. Catch you later.

Kevin

We see our fair share of crazy things from home inspectors all across the country. They send them to us, so we share them with you, and we have a little bit of fun along the way Who's first? Ohh!

Heath

I'm not even sure where to start with this.

Heath is first. Jenn

Looks like dinner.

Heath

At least they used a junction box, but it is. It's a big spaghetti mess of wires into this small container and wire nuts everywhere. There's no way you can close that up.

Richard

How many are you allowed in a box?

Heath

In something like that, maybe four or five,

depending on the actual size. Kevin

So they're close.

Heath

So, they're only over by four or five time.

Tom

And it's not legal?

Jenn

They are oozing out.

Heath

It's walking the line, yeah.

Jenn

Well, check mine out. Real estate listed "built-in irrigation system."

Tom

Does that not work?

Jenn

No.

We have pipes everywhere. Kevin

One, two, three, four, five, six off of one spigot.

Jenn

Yeah, it's pretty incredible.

Tom

And what's the red tape for?

Jenn

Oh, to plug the leaks.

Tom

Oh,

nice. Jenn

Just a little handy tie.

Tom

Well, that's good, but, talk about leaks, look at this. Huh? There's a slate roof. Slate roofs are difficult to patch, but when you patch them, it's really a method. You're supposed to put a piece of copper flashing down, put the slate in, bend it up -- That stops it from dropping down. But this way, the duct tape --

Heath

Duct tape fixes everything.

Tom

It's a lot easier. You know, you don't have to buy the copper. You don't have to take the time.

Kevin

I love the old-world craftsmanship of slate and duct tape.

Richard

You know, duct tape, I use it for my sneakers to hold them together, but this guy used it --

All

Oh!

Richard

That makes that tub absolutely waterproof for at least 27 minutes.

That's beautiful. Heath

Is that wrong?

Richard

Is that wrong? In a funny way, it isn't.

Kevin

Terrific. Well, we love getting them, and we love having fun with them, so if you've got a home inspection nightmare and a picture, send it to us. We'll have a blast with it. Taking a tub, Richard. You take a tub once in a while.

Richard

I do.

Kevin

Okay, Mauro, a lot of drop cloths on the shelf at the home center. We got to pick the right one for the paint job. What do you think? We going with canvas, straight-up?

Mauro

Well, if you're going to canvas, this is what we don't use. Painters usually don't do this. They're usually for -- I mean, we can use for prep work, but most of the time, what we're using is this one here, Kevin. It's canvas-backed. It has the plastic here. Even if we have, like, a paint accident, it won't go to the surface.

Kevin

So, we like canvas because it can absorb spilled paint, but you like it backed so that the paint doesn't go all the way through and ruin the carpet or the floor.

Mauro

Just want to make sure that we have no accidents at all.

Kevin

Alright, so, with no backing -- just for the scraping and the prep.

Absolutely. Kevin

What do you got here?

Mauro

Well, this one is also a canvas, but it has this product that sticks to the floor and is good for staircase and counters.

Kevin

Oh, yeah, like little rubber nubs, huh?

Mauro

Yeah, that won't slip.

Kevin

So, I go to the home center. I haven't seen that -- but when I see these things, I'm thinking, "Man, that's expensive," and the plastic here -- even the thick stuff, this is a lot cheaper.

Mauro

Exactly, but we use -- use only this for outside. We use it for covering plants and shrubs. Pack up at the end of the end of the day, throw it away.

Kevin

You don't use this on the ground when you've got a ladder and you're working outside?

Absolutely not. Kevin

Why not?

It's slippery. Kevin

Oh, okay, slippery. So, outside for the thick stuff.

Mauro

Yep, that's 4 mil.

Kevin

That's what?

Mauro

That's 4 mil.

Kevin

4 mil? And then so does that mean that the thin stuff you use inside?

Mauro

The thin stuff is the stuff that I like to use to cover furniture and cover everything inside the room when it's furniture.

Kevin

So this is for covering, again, not underfoot.

Mauro

Not underfoot, absolutely not.

Kevin

What about the big blue guy here? Do you guys use these?

Mauro

Okay, big blue guy is excellent to use on the exterior projects. When you're scraping a house, heavy scraping, you tie up that on the wall, and everything that falls into the stuff, put it in a trash bag. You can clean it, you can wash it, and it will be ready for many other projects.

Kevin

But don't use it when you're actually doing the painting on the exterior.

Mauro

On the floor, absolutely not.

Kevin

The things I don't know. Paper?

Mauro

Paper -- I like to use this paper. Once we paint a room with lots of baseboards, I like to run a layer of paper all along the baseboards, and then I leave like 4 or 5 inches off, and I still put my drop cloths on top of it.

Kevin

So canvas on top of the paper, and you're using this because you want a nice, tight line that you can cut to?

Mauro

Nice, crisp line that's, like, you know, make it cool, beautiful.

Kevin

Well, I now know what brush to pick, and, obviously, what drop cloth to use, too.

Mauro

Now you know which drop cloth to use --

interior and exterior. Kevin

Thank you, Mauro.

Mauro

You're welcome.

Kevin

Hey, Ross. Hey,

Richard. Richard

Hey.

Kevin

What are you guys working on?

Richard

Talking about indoor air quality today. Buildings need to breathe, and when I first got in this building, they breathed plenty. You know, they breathed at a rate of 10 to 12 air changes per hour.

Kevin

That needs, like, a full stop to make people understand that. Like, all of the air in the house leaves 10, 12 times an hour?

Richard

Divide that into 60 minutes, every 5 minutes, you have the whole house completely emptied out and replaced because everything leaks so much.

Kevin

That's a lot of breathing.

Richard

So, nowadays, what are we seeing?

Ross

Nationally, the average is seven air changes, and code in Massachusetts for new construction's three. Now, that's because of spray foam and air barriers. You know, we're getting away from the traditional building materials we used to use.

Kevin

So, how bad is the indoor air quality as a result?

Richard

Inside the house it's the ultimate sort of Petri dish, this hamper, really, where stuff is trapped. And people don't realize that the air inside most houses is two to five times worse than any air you're gonna find on a busy city street

because it's trapped. Kevin

That's depressing. Indoor air is dirtier than outdoor air.

Ross

And these pollutants are coming from everywhere -- the cleaning products under our sink, paints, carpets, furniture, I mean, cooking.

Kevin

People. Right, me.

I talk a lot. Richard

You. A lot.

Ross

The gas range, the oven, right? Those are all giving off chemicals.

Kevin

So, these gadgets that I'm looking at here, are they going to tell me what I've got in the air and how bad it is?

Ross

So, these are a variety of different monitors that have different sensors. So, this one does CO2, right, where we're breathing out. It does temperature. It does relative humidity. This one, for example, is doing VOCs, particulate matter -- those are the particulates that are really, really small, you can't see, that you can actually inhale, get into your lungs, and into your bloodstream.

Kevin

So, we don't have a device that tells us everything that's in the air and breaks it down. You need a device to go looking for a particular thing?

Ross

You're picking specific things.

Richard

You got to decide what you want to monitor and find the right device for it.

Kevin

So, once this thing tells me I have too much CO2 or, what was it, VOCs?

Ross

VOCs or particulate matter.

Kevin

What do I do with it?

Richard

Well, you got to ventilate, you know? A building needs to breathe, but it doesn't need to breathe through every door and window. It needs to have a set of lungs, and if I was talking about a set of lungs, it'd be a box something like this -- either called an HRV or an ERV. So, how it works is that you've got this core in the middle, and now stale air that would leave the building from bathrooms or contaminated air would pass this way with a fan across this core and to outside, but at the very same time, another fan brings outside air in across this core in the opposing direction. So, imagine this air in the winter. It's rich with temperature, and it wants to leave to outside. It would have just gone outside. Now, the cold air picks up the heat that's in the exiting air, and it keeps the energy inside the building, so you keep the energy inside the building but exhaust the stale air out of the building.

Kevin

We've seen those before. I get it. I put one of these things on my wall, which I have not seen before. What does it do? Does it beep and say "Turn on" or alarm, or --

Ross

So, yeah, some of them will just give you a visual indicator of, like, a light, right, that changes colors. Some of them will actually talk to your phone, so will actually send you a notification or will actually give you a graph that shows you when you actually have bad air quality. And so here's the main screen for one of them. I can see three different pollutants -- particulate matter, VOCs, and carbon dioxide. I can also see temperature and relative humidity in the space, and here I'm actually seeing them over time. So, here's an event where our particulate matter

actually spiked to 251. Kevin

Caused by --

Ross

And that was caused by the gas range being on

without the exhaust fan running. Kevin

Oh, interesting.

Ross

At the most basic level, you could crack a window or run an exhaust fan when you see this, but where it's going is that these devices now are talking to these devices or other exhaust fans.

Kevin

Like a smart thermostat, now we got smart indoor air.

Ross

It does it automatically behind the scenes.

Kevin

So, what do you guys think? New normal? Are we gonna be seeing a lot of these?

Richard

I think you have to. Everybody's gonna watch. The buildings are only getting tighter, and the last thing I'll say about this is I built a new house, what, 15 years ago, super tight with all the foam insulation, tight windows, and I didn't have one of these for the first year. And what happened is we always felt sluggish, and mold formed everywhere. And then we put it in, and it just changed. It's an intangible that you can't really transfer until you live with it, just to have fresh air in the building. It just changes the way you live in the space.

Absolutely. Kevin

Cool. Alright, guys, well, good information. Thank you. So, which one measures methane?

Ross

That one does.

Joe

Yeah, so I really appreciate you coming by, Tom.

Tom

My pleasure.

Joe

Our house was built in the 1940s. We bought it about four years ago. My wife, my parents, and I -- We completely gutted

the entire place. Tom

Really?

Joe

Yeah, brand-new plumbing, electrical, wall board, insulation. We did the kitchen ourselves, hung the cabinets, the counters.

Tom

You did it all, even the tile work.

Joe

Even the tile work, yeah. It's been a process.

Tom

It's a lot of work, isn't it?

Joe

A lot of work, but very rewarding.

Tom

Yeah, I mean, look what you've done.

It's beautiful. Joe

Yeah, thank you. One thing that is driving me insane are these doors. My 2-year-old son lives down the hall here. We sleep here, and our coats and to feed the cat in the morning --

I wake up at 4

00 in the morning to go to work.

Yeah. Joe

And when I go down the stairs, I have to open the door.

Door creaks

Tom

Oh, I hear that.

And that squeak at 4

00 in the morning is -- It's like an air-raid siren, so...

Tom

Wakes your son up.

Joe

Yeah, wakes him up no problem.

Tom

Well, you know, there's a lot of --

Door creaking

Tom

Boy, that is loud. There is a lot of reasons why a hinge can squeak. One of them is alignment. It could be misaligned from the door to the jamb or hinge to hinge. And if I look right up at this top hinge right here, you can see that these barrel alignments aren't right on. Have you tried anything at all?

Joe

Yeah, I've tried different types of lubricants, but, to be honest, a week, couple weeks, a month later, the squeak just keeps coming back.

Tom

Yeah, so, what's happening is they could be wearing back and forth, and when the lubricant wears out,

it starts to squeak. Joe

Sure.

Tom

So what I want to do is I want to take some of the stress off of one hinge at a time, and, to do that, I'm gonna knock the pin out.

Door creaking

Tom

Alright, so it's still squeaking.

Joe

Little bit.

Tom

And, also, see how this hinge pin

holds the hinges together. Joe

Right.

Tom

When I pull that out, the door dropped down.

Sure. Tom

Alright, so I'm gonna knock this one in just a little bit.

Okay. Tom

Put it back. Alright, I just put that one in there loose. Now I'll go after the second one.

That hinge pin came right out. Joe

Yeah.

Tom

Not a lot of stress on that.

Joe

Right. Pretty quiet, though.

Tom

Yeah, that quieted right down. Let's put it back in and see if that -- but I also don't have this one

all the way down. Joe

Right. Yeah, it's still pretty quiet.

Tom

Yeah. So, it could be this one right here. That hinge pin's not down all the way, so I don't even know if I have to do that bottom one. Let me see if I tap it back down. See if we get the squeak back.

Door creaks

Tom

So I think it's that top hinge, and I think it has to do with the alignment of the barrels right here,

that I showed you. Joe

Okay, yeah.

Tom

Let me show you on a hinge over here. Now, you said you've tried some lubricant.

Yeah. Tom

Alright, so, if I was dealing with a squeaky hinge like that, the first thing I would grab is some multipurpose oil right here that you get at a hardware store or the home center. And what you'd want to do is you want to pull the hinge pin up just a little bit and take a couple drops and put it right on the side just like that.

Okay. Tom

And let that flow down. Put a little drop there, little drop here, little drop here. Alright, and then drive the pin back and move it back and forth.

Joe

Yeah, I tried that. It lasted a couple weeks, but the squeak came back.

Tom

Alright, so you tried that, so the next thing I would do is I'd pull out the pin altogether and take some of this lubricant right here -- it's a dry graphite -- and I just squeeze a little of the powder down the hole there.

Okay. Tom

Maybe even shoot a little bit up from the bottom.

Joe

Yep.

Tom

Take the pin, put it in a little bit. Lubricate the pin. And drive it down. And push it back and forth to wear it in.

Joe

Yeah, I tried that. It did work a lot better than the multipurpose lubricant, but after a couple weeks, it just didn't do the trick.

Tom

Okay, well, I think it's an alignment problem right here,

as I pointed out on the door. Joe

Okay.

Tom

And also the gap spacing between each hinge. So, look right here. If I move this one, see how it's moving up and down from one another?

Joe

Oh, yeah, yep.

Tom

That creates a gap for the hinge to flow easily

without any resistance. Joe

Okay. Sure.

Tom

And I think by that barrel on your door there -- because the barrel is out of alignment, it may be too tight on one side.

Joe

Okay.

Tom

So, what I want to do first is try to see if we can align that while it's on the door.

Joe

Alright, sounds great.

Tom

So, let me show you this hinge right up here. If you look at this bottom one,

it's bent in like that. Joe

Yeah.

Tom

Okay, so, again, we have the gap on this side but not on that side. When you go up higher, we've got a gap here but not here.

Sure. Tom

And then this top one actually looks like it's bent that way.

Joe

Yeah,

yeah. Tom

So what I want to do is I want to remove this pin and see if I can knock it

back in place. Joe

Okay.

Tom

Okay, so now that pin's out, so I'm gonna take the pin, and I'm gonna try to use that to bang this over just a little bit. Do the same thing on the bottom. See if I can straighten it just a hair. This one's got to go over a little bit. Alright, let's close the door. Pick it up a little bit and get this pin in. Alright, let's try it.

Joe

Ah, sweet silence.

Tom

Alright, so I think your son will be able to sleep now.

Joe

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate it. Tom

My pleasure.

Kevin

Sweet silence, indeed.

Yeah. Kevin

Nice job. So, how often do you see that? Is that common to have a hinge bent like that?

Tom

Well, I mean, those are inexpensive hinges, so the metal is really soft, and you could bend that if you drive the pin down too hard with your hammer. Or if the hinge is apart and you drop it on the floor, that could bend it just a little bit, too.

Kevin

Get what you pay for, right?

Exactly. Kevin

Alright, well, that's it from us. Keep your letters and your e-mails coming. We'd love to hear from you, so, until next time,

I'm Kevin O'Connor. Tom

And I'm Tom Silva.

Kevin

For "Ask This Old House." Next time on "Ask This Old House"...

Tom

In Utah, I'll transform this ho-hum handrail into something that makes a statement.

Man

Then what I think would really look cool is if we could do some cable railing.

Tom

Absolutely.

Richard

You probably don't think much about the pipes that vent your water heater or your furnace. I'll tell you why you should.

Nathan

Do you have an outdated door like this? I'll show you how to make it look like new.

Mauro

And I'll brighten up the front of this house with just a little paint.