Ask This Old House

KEVIN

Today on "Ask This Old House"... Replacing a bathroom faucet like this is pretty straightforward and simple. Well, most of the time. Oh, boy. Two traps is not good, and it's not legal. I'll show you how to see circuits and fuses in a whole new light. You're going old school here. You don't see these that often anymore. And it's red, it's steel, and it has an adjustable foot. What is it? This is the latest innovation in health care. So what's it telling me?

ROGER

Yeah, not too good. You'll be fine.

Laughter

ROGER

That's next on "Ask This Old House." Hey, Tommy, good morning. Good morning. What's going on? Roger and I are heading over to the home center. -You need anything? -Actually, I do. You want to get me a small, one-pound box of five-penny box nails. Those are the little ones, right?

Chuckles

ROGER

Yeah, those are the little ones. Get me a small box of 1 5/8" stainless screws. Oh, 1 5/8", that's longer. You can handle that. I think you can handle that. And a small bottle of exterior wood glue. I should probably write this down. You got that? Anything else while were at it? Yeah, well, what the heck. If you're going to stop by a coffee shop, I'll take a black decaf, get Kevin a regular, because he's only going to whine if you don't bring him back something. -And get some pastries. -Little crostini type of thing? Crostinis are good. Yeah, get those. -I'm really glad we asked. -Yeah, I'm glad you're going. -Hey, Tommy, how are you doing? -Good, how are you doing? Good. Uh, are people getting coffee or something? No. Why, do you want something? -Well, if they're going. -Too late. I was thinking about having a fire later today, but look, someone left the top off of this thing, and it rained, and now we've got, like, ash soup. So we've got some work to do here. They're a mess. You know what? I got an idea. We could actually make a wooden top for this, and that will keep the rain out when you're not using it, but it can also double as a table when you're sitting around and you're not having a fire. That's actually not a bad idea. You know, we don't have that many fires. We do sit around it more often. All right, what do you want me to do? Well, why don't you clean that out -- I've got some supplies upstairs -- and bring it up. -Okay. Coffee, too, right? -Maybe, maybe. Okay, Tommy, I got the fire pit all cleaned up for you. All right. For the top, I would recommend using any kind of decking material that you would use outside. And I like to use ipe, also known as ironwood. Right, we've seen you use it a lot before, comes to us from Brazil, and you love it 'cause it's almost indestructible. It's almost indestructible, it has resins in it that really protect it against the weather. Now, our top is going to be round. And I want to have about a 1" finished overhang on each side, so I would start with a board that's a little bit longer on the overhang so we can then cut it. Also, you notice that the board in the middle is going to be the longest. As you move out to the edge, it gets shorter.

KEVIN

Right, so as you go way out here, if you used a board this length, you'd have a ton of waste. Right. Well, let me show you a way to mark the board so we get the best yield out of each one. All right, now here's an 8' piece of decking. Take that piece, flip it over, lay it on top of the board. Now, we want to have a 1" overhang all around the perimeter when we're finished, plus a little extra while we make it, so I'm going to measure right here. Let's go about 1 1/2". And I'll measure 1 1/2" on this side, put a mark, and that we'll cut. All right, so, if you'll notice, the two boards in the middle are pretty close to the same dimension. But now that we get further away, now if I take and mark my 1 1/2" here, and then I mark down here, 1 1/2" where I'm going to cut it, take that board, and I'll probably be able to use this one out here. Let's see. Okay. Just slide this one under there. Look at that.

TOM

Perfect. Two more pieces. All right, good. All of our boards are cut to rough length. And the next thing I want to deal with is this joint right here -- this is an eased edge. And it's an eased edge because it's decking, and you don't want to have a sharp edge. You also open up the joints so rainwater will run through that and not lay on the deck. But we don't want rainwater to run through there and fill up our fire pit. We need to get rid of that eased edge, and to do that, we're going to make two passes through our table saw. With the boards all trued up, we can glue them together with some exterior glue. I've marked the center line on each board so I can line up all the pieces. All right, now we want to snug up the clamps just a little bit so we can make our boards even or flush. Okay, that's good. Now we can tighten them up, but we don't want to make them too tight to take all the glue out of the joint. Now we just clean up the excess glue with a wet rag. A lot easier to do it now than after it dries. Then we'll give it about an hour to set up. All right, the glue's all set up. Now let's sand out the high spots. -Okay. -Okay. Ready to trace a circle on here? Well, we could trace a circle, but I want a 1" overhang, so I set my scribes and follow it all the way around the perimeter and then cut it with a jigsaw. But I have a better way to do that. We're going to cut it with a router. First thing I need to do is find the center. I'm going to take this point right here, over here. I'm going to divide that in half. So 33" -- 16 3/4". Then I'm going to find the center of the board this way. That's 2 1/2". That's the center of my table right there.

KEVIN

Yeah.

TOM

I'm going to drive a little hole right there. All right. Now what I've built is a jig, or a template, to set my router on. -Okay. -It has two positions -- right here, where this screw is, is the center of my table. Right here, where this hole is, is where my router will go. And the distance between the two is the radius of the circle.

KEVIN

Clever.

TOM

Okay,so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this screw, and I'm going to position it over that hole that I drilled. This is the tricky part. Got it? All right. Now I'm just going to snug this up a little bit, I don't want to overtighten it. The hole in this template is the same size as my router collar. With the finished piece raised off the table, I want to make a few passes with my router, cutting a little bit at a time. Let's see how it fits.

KEVIN

Mm, that looks pretty sweet right there, Tommy.

TOM

Pretty good. Now the next thing we have to think about is rain. When the table gets wet from rain, the water runs off the edge of the table and will actually get pulled right under the table, and it'll fill up the pit.

KEVIN

Surface tension, like underneath a window sill.

TOM

Absolutely. What we need to do is cut a kerf around the perimeter to stop that from happening.

KEVIN

Let me guess -- router, right?

TOM

Absolutely. I'm just going to reposition this screw in about 1 1/4", and that will change the radius of our circle. This time I only need to do a shallow groove, not all the way through. Using a router with a roundover bit will dress up the outside edge. We'll do that on the top and the bottom. To keep the tabletop flat, we're going to install two cleats perpendicular to the boards on the top. We're going to predrill holes in the cleats larger than the screws so the screws can move as the top expands and contracts. Okay, Tommy, just get this cleaned up. There we go. All right, let's try it out. Now, those cleats are going to keep the top flat, but it's also going to let air circulate underneath it.

KEVIN

Wow, Tommy, that thing looks fantastic. That's going to be a great addition to the front of the barn. You know, and I think a lot of people are going to want one of these. Put me on that list. Nice job. Wow, Scott, fuses, huh? You're going old-school here. You don't see these that often anymore. Well, I work in a lot of old houses, and the other day, I was in a basement, saw an old fuse panel, took a picture, and tweeted it. -A bunch of responses. -No surprise, right? I mean, everyone's got some sort of panel in their house. They probably don't think about them that often, but you obviously think about it all the time. We do. Well, everyone knows electricity flows in our house through wire. Mm-hmm. The smaller the wire, the less electricity, the larger the wire, the greater electricity. Makes sense.

SCOTT

If any wire carries too much electricity, it can heat up and cause problems. This carrying of electricity, called current, is measured in amps. Okay. You've heard of a 15-amp, a 20-amp, or a 30-amp. Sure, it's usually when I think about the fuses or the circuit breakers. That's right. That was the first line of protection that we had, and we would put them in a porcelain holder like this -- -That's old school. -And put the fuses in, and they would protect the wires going downline. Then they came along with a more packaged version of it, where the fuses and everything was protected with this metal panel. And when you say protection, how is it providing that protection? So, inside this fuse, there's a metallic strip. The metallic strip melts faster than the copper wire does when it heats up. So too much resistance means too much heat, and that would literally disintegrate. That would just separate, burn out, no more electricity could go through the wire. That was always part of the problem, right? Because when one of these fuses blew, you had to get rid of this, and you had to put a new one in, and if you didn't have it, you couldn't put anything in that circuit, and it wasn't working until you did. If it was a 15 or a 20 or a 30, it didn't matter -- they all fit in the same holder. -They were interchangeable? -That's right. So what happened for us, as electricians, later on, you could only put the right size fuse in the right size fuse holder because of the thread differences.

KEVIN

Oh, look at that.

SCOTT

So they have an adapter that you would screw in to the standard fuse holder, and this had different threads, which only screwed in to that particular spot. So you could not put a 30-amp fuse in a 20-amp spot. But in either case, any fuse is basically sacrificial. They're all disposable. Yeah, once it's gone, you throw it out. Okay. Then the improvement upon that was a circuit breaker. This is what a lot of people have in their houses, and these are actually the switches. And you're saying that these are not disposable. No, they're not. They're resettable. And I've brought a circuit breaker. This one's a 15-amp. I've removed the side panel to show you what happens inside. We have the electricity, which travels up through this, around this wire, and through this little thermal magnetic device, and it goes out to the wire itself. Now, when the electricity heats up, this thermal device here, it distorts, shuts the electricity off immediately, and you have no more electricity, there's no more overload.

KEVIN

So it's still measuring that resistance, that heat, but instead of destroying itself, it just changes positions, which causes this to trip. That's correct. Which is great, because if you ever have one of those things trip, you can just go back to the panel, turn it back on, and you're in business. No more searching for fuses. I love circuit breakers and the history lesson. -Thank you. -You got it.

TOM

All right, guys, here we go. It's red, it has an "L" shape on one side, with an adjustable foot on the other. What is it?

ROGER

For once, I got it.

TOM

You do? Yeah, you go out to a fancy restaurant, you sit down, and your chair wobbles back and forth. -Your table, Mr. Cook. -Or your table wobbles.

RICHARD

That's awful. All you do is get up, discreetly slide this under the table, do a little adjustment, and you are rock solid. Look at that. Wow! I actually like that. Still sitting at the kids' table, Roger? Don't be mean! This, believe it or not, is the latest innovation in health care. Really? Richard, would you please sit up on the table.

ROGER

Hold on a second, it's dirty, it's dirty. I don't think I like this. You know, these days, everybody is taking a selfie, okay? Well, this is actually -- Nurse Silva, will you turn my light on, please? This is actually selfie care, okay. So you take your smartphone, you put it right here like this, and now it starts taking out all the information. -Out of me? -Out of you. Watch. Reflexes. Wow. Tense, huh? All right, look right here. So, have you been feeling listless? Any major changes since last year? -No. -Still eating right? -Sure. -Drinking a lot?

Clears throat

ROGER

And, so, okay. And then look at this. Sorry, pulse first. Get the pulse. -Oxygen level. You okay? -Yeah. -All right, now cough. -

Coughs

ROGER

-I mean breathe. -

Gasps

ROGER

In or out? In or out? In or out? What do you want? Takes all the information, and then it takes all of that stuff and your passwords and sends them right to Bangalore. -Bangor, Maine? -Bangalore. Bangalore, okay. So what's it telling me? -Don't tell him. -Nah, not so good. You'll be fine. Yeah. Well, just so you guys know, you're all wrong. -Yeah? -It's not what it is at all. You travel at all and you worry about somebody breaking into your room? -Him? -All right. This is a burglar plate that keeps the burglar out.

Laughing

RICHARD

Is that the Hamburglar? Yeah. You take one of these things here, and you slide it under the door. You -- Like that.

Grunts

RICHARD

So when you crank it down and make it tight, the burglar can't get in. Let me try it. -Look at that. -It's not a burglar. It's Richard. Don't let him in. Richard, welcome to Missouri. It's great to have you here. Glad to be here. How long have you guys been in the house? We just moved into the place about a month ago, and we're really enjoying it. Beautiful, big master bedroom, beautiful. Yeah, it's awesome. My girlfriend really loves it. What sold me on the place is a nice, big garage out back. I'm with you. You got a bathroom right off the master? That's great. We do. It's pretty perfect. One thing we're not crazy about is this faucet that came with the house. All right, so what don't you like about it? Not crazy about the color, and it's a little bit beat up. All right, so this is this darker burnished brass finish, and I notice some calcium buildup on the outside right here. Actually, the finish on the faucet does not match the finish on the drain. Well, nowadays it's pretty straightforward to just get a new faucet, go to the home center, pick one up for 100 bucks or less, and then replace it. Usually, it's pretty simple. Oh, boy. I think I might have spoke too soon, Ed. The faucet might be simple, but look at this on the drainage side. You actually have two traps under here. Two traps is a problem? Two traps is not good, and it's not legal. Here's why. Normally, you want to have a single trap that has water right in this seal right here to keep sewer gas from coming up and making a smell in the bathroom. Now, when you have two traps like this -- and the way it's piped is also called a "full S" -- watch what happens. Water will come down through the trap, and now -- To have a siphon, you have to have the presence of a short leg and then a long leg, which is exactly what you have here. Water comes through, comes up the short leg. Now the weight of that water pulls, and now it pulls the water out of that trap. Comes down into this trap. Look what you have right here. Another short leg, another long leg. So now it would go here, create another siphon.

Slurps

RICHARD

And now you could end up with two traps with neither one of them having any water in it, and that's not good. And that's not all. Look at this. I also noticed that there's no vent on this -- it's unvented. And if it's unvented, it can cause all kinds of issues. Let me prove it by filling this basin with water. All right, so this basin is full. Now, normally, when I pull the stopper, this slug of water goes down, and now, behind, it's looking for air, and the plumbing vent normally breaks that vacuum. Let's see what happens without a vent. Should be getting thirsty for air.

Gurgling

RICHARD

Oh. See the little tornado/cyclone? That is an unvented sink. That doesn't sound good. Can we fix this? Actually, we can. Let's start by getting rid of the old faucet, disconnect it, and get the plumbing out of the way. That should do it, Ed. Take it right out of there. All right, so here's the new faucet you picked out.

ED

Well, my girlfriend picked out.

RICHARD

Well, she has very good taste. It's brushed nickel, it's got this nice waterfall spout right here -- that'll look great. Now, it can be mounted into a single hole, but you've actually got the three holes in the existing countertop. Just hold that up so I can just go. That'll look great, okay. And the nice thing is it also has what you don't have now -- a pop-up that matches the finish. I think this is some of the stuff you can do though. -Let's go. -Okay. All right, Ed, just grab some of that putty, and let's just make a seal on the bottom of that plate. All right, so that's puttied. Now I want to show you the connection you're going to make underneath. We need to tighten this faucet down. So you can see this yoke right here. It's going to go onto this long bolt right here, and then you're going to take this nut and tighten it up, tighten it up, tighten it up until you pull this so tight that we squeeze out the putty right here, okay? -So you take those underneath. -Okay.

ED

It's pretty tight under here. Yep, that's why I have you doing it, brother. -Sneaky. -I've outgrown it. All right, so the faucet's connected, good job. Now it's time to think about the drain line. Great.

RICHARD

So, remember your old drain right here? Water came down through two traps. Whoop-de-loop-de-loop-de-loop. Always looking for air, and it couldn't get it. So here's what we're going to do to correct it. We're going to cut in a "TY" right here, and here is our drain. It's going to come down through a single trap, the right number of traps for this job, and the water will go this way and down the drain. Well, if I was doing this installation new, this port right here would go to a vent that went through the roof, but that would require me opening up the walls right now, which I don't think you want. Let's see if we can work around that. What I'm going to use instead is this. This is a mechanical vent. This will allow air to come in this way. When the water's going by, air will be able to be drawn in to break the vacuum, but it will never let sewer gas go out this way. Let me show you how it works. So, now, when water's coming this way, it's going to pull. So I'm going to pull.

Sucking

RICHARD

Air's going in. But if I push...

blows

RICHARD

can't go out, all right? So that's going to be a perfect solution for this. All right, now it's time to glue it all together. All right. I've applied plumber's putty to the top of the drain connections and tightened it up. And now I just need to clean and glue our PVC connections. Okay. That should do it. How's it looking, Richard? We are doing great. I'm just cleaning up. -So give it a test. -Okay. I like that waterfall faucet. That spout's pretty cool. -That's nice. -All right, hot and cold. Make sure it comes out of both sides -- yep. All right, look at the drain here, a little different. Normally, it has an operator back here. This one, you just push the drain down, and it's closed. And now I think we should fill this up and test our mechanical vent. Let's fill the basin... and see if we have a cyclone.

ED

I hope not.

RICHARD

All right, so let's try our mechanical drain.

Gurgles softly

RICHARD

Hear that going down. No big gurgle like it used to. That is the way a sink is supposed to drain. -That is great. -Congratulations. You have a new faucet, a new drain, and a vent that works. Okay, thank you so much for all your help. It was my pleasure. All right, guys. Another good show, and another one down. -Bring it in. -Thank you. All right, and a perfect time to have a fire. -What do you say? -A fire? -Yeah, a fire. -I just put a wooden top on. We finally got a place to put our beer. I like the table way more than a fire pit, thank you very much. Keep your e-mails and your letters coming. We'd love to hear from you. Normally, we're working. So, until next time, I'm Kevin O'Connor... -I'm Rich Trethewey. -I'm Tom Silva. -And I'm Roger Cook. -For "Ask This Old House." It is a fire pit, guys. It is, yeah, but it's also a nice table, too.

KEVIN

Where are we going to have a fire?

TOM

By the way, you got the wrong nails.

RICHARD

Of course I did!

TOM

Yeah, you never let me down.

KEVIN

Next time on "Ask This Old House"... I'm headed to Cleveland to help a homeowner dress up her windows. Well, Erin, your window is all trimmed. What do you think?

ERIN

I love it. This is exactly what we were hoping for. A pool like this needs power to run the filters and the pump, but water and electricity can be a dangerous combination if not done right. Get ready for your first pool party. And it's white, it's plastic, and it opens up. What is it?