Ask This Old House

Kevin

Today on "Ask This Old House"...

Jordan

And we had a plumber come out. To fix the leak, they wanted to take $3,000, rip everything out, the surround, replace it with brand-new stuff, and we just felt like that was a little bit too much. So we wanted a second opinion.

Richard

I've never seen a shower valve like this in my entire career, and now it's leaking. I'm heading to Salt Lake City with a solution.

Nathan

I'll show you how to refinish worn-out stair treads. Finish is very important on a stair tread. You really want to protect that wood. Once you break through it and water or dirt gets in the grain,

tough to fix them. Kevin

Yeah.

Tom

And this garage roof is covered in moss, but the solution is pretty simple.

Kevin

, Hi, there. I'm Kevin O'Connor, and welcome back to "Ask This Old House," where we have got the crew to answer questions about your house. We'd love to hear from you, so keep your letters and your e-mails coming. Where you sneaking off to, Mr. Silva?

Tom

Hey. See this? A viewer sent that.

Kevin

Oh,

my goodness. Tom

Yeah.

Kevin

What are you going to do about that?

Tom

Well, it's a pretty common problem. A lot of people have it. Check in with me later, and I'll show you.

Kevin

You think you can fix it, huh?

Tom

Oh,

I can fix it. Kevin

Of course he can fix it. Hey, Richard. How you doing?

Richard

Hey. Good morning.

Kevin

Finally going for that plumber's license...

Richard

Look. I flunked 25 times.

Kevin

...after all these years.

Richard

No, actually, we got an e-mail from a homeowner that had a shower valve that they wanted repaired.

Kevin

Oh.

Richard

And I have never seen the valve ever before. I've searched everything. I've sent this to every friend of mine in the industry.

Kevin

A valve you've never seen?

Richard

I have not,

so... Kevin

That says something.

Richard

I think we're doomed. We're going to have to go there and replace it.

Kevin

And where is there?

Richard

Salt Lake City, right on the way home. You must be Jordan.

Jordan

Richard, welcome to Salt Lake City.

Richard

Nice to be here.

Jordan

My family and I have lived in this house for about two years. I've got a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old.

That must be exciting. Jordan

It's very exciting. We've got a couple of problems we want to show you.

Come on in. Richard

Alright. Let's go. Place looks great in here. Have you done any of the work?

Jordan

Yeah. We've done all the painting in the house and a few other small projects throughout.

Richard

Great.

Jordan

It's a 1944 bungalow. Bedrooms are right here on the left. Kitchen's here on the right, but the real issue is our bathroom that I want to show you. So, what we have here is a couple problems. The showerhead is really short, but the valve -- What we're having is, it's leaking. And we had a plumber come out. He looked at it, said it might have been from an RV unit.

Okay. Jordan

And to fix the leak, they wanted to take $3,000, rip everything out, the surround, replace it with brand-new stuff, and we just felt like that was a little bit too much. So we wanted a second opinion.

Richard

Alright. Let me peek in there. Why don't you jump out for a second? That plumber was probably right about one thing. I bet you this was an RV unit, because I've never seen it from the standard plumbing industry, you know? There's no markings on it to say it's a name brand. And what it is is a conventional two-valve, it looks like. So it's got hot and cold pipes that probably come in this way, and you just mix the hot and the cold, and it comes down to the tub spout, or it goes up to the showerhead. Now, I could try to repair it, you know? It's probably got a washer inside. It's probably got a seat down below, but the thing is 70 years old. And you mentioned you got two young kids, right?

I do. Richard

This was installed before the invention of a single-lever pressure-balance shower valve, and this has got a balancing spool inside it to adjust for changes in pressure inside the building. That means if somebody flushes the toilet, you can't get scalded. So now the challenge is, how do you put it in here? The standard plate comes like this. Yeah, but look what happens. It's not big enough to cover the old opening, so what the manufacturer makes is this really cool plate, and that would allow us potentially to open up the fiberglass right here to potentially have enough room to get in there and make the connections and put a new modern valve in without having to replace this fiberglass. So what do you think?

Jordan

That sounds great.

Richard

Alright. Well, let me run down to the basement and turn off the water. Alright. The water is shut off, and I've learned a lot about your house.

Okay. Richard

Somebody has replaced almost every inch of the piping in this building with PEX, and that's good, except for one spot. Can you guess where?

Jordan

Right behind the shower here.

Richard

Exactly, so here's -- Right behind us is that bathroom. Here's the shower, and right underneath us is this. This is original galvanized steel piping. That was only used in this country for a short period of time, right around the '40s. You said 1944 here, right?

Jordan

Yep.

Richard

During the war effort, they moved from threaded brass to save the precious metals for the armaments, and they went to this. As its name suggests, it's a steel piping with a galvanized coating both on the outside and on the inside to keep it from rusting. And over time, that coating would wear away, and it would start to rust. It would rust from the inside and actually start to create a layer inside there, and it would impede the flow and ultimately clog the line, and then it could also leak at the thread. Now, this also could only be connected by cutting and threading and using two wrenches, okay? So this is no longer used. It's been replaced by copper, and that's what we have to do here. The combination of this access panel and that remodeling plate on the other side means I can get you 2/3 of the way, right? We can do the copper, but right from the existing valve up to here is probably galvanized steel like this, and how am I going to tie onto that? I can't get two wrenches to tie onto it, so I'm saying, "What are we going to do? How can we do it?" I thought we could open up a wall, right? But not with the plumbers we're thinking about. Right behind this cabinet is that shower arm, and if we can get this kitchen cabinet off the wall easily -- See the screws here, here, here, and we take it off, it means we could open up the wall. It would give us full access to the back side. We could put that showerhead at any height you want, right? And then we put it right back up and cover the hole. You up for that?

Jordan

Yeah. Let's do it.

Richard

I could do it for maybe $2,500.

Sounds great. Richard

I'm only kidding. We'll start by scoring around the edges of the cabinet on all four sides. This will ensure a clean break when we remove it. Just a little more. Lovely. I've traced out the outline of the new cover plate and also marked out a buffer zone so when I cut the fiberglass, I don't risk cutting too much of it away. There's your valve. Put that in your memory drawer. Then we cut an access panel on the other side of the wall in the kitchen. There we go. Look what we found! Here's a piece of the galvan, so look inside the pipe. You can see the rust forming on the inside. That is the last of the galvanized. It's gone. Now it's time to start putting the new stuff in. It's going to be easier to make most of the soldering connections outside the wall and then slide the entire assembly into place after. Alright. We got our new hole drilled for the new height of the shower arm. Here's the old one right here. Alright. Jordan, I'm going to drop this whole valve assembly down to you. Try to get the pipes down into the holes where the galvanized pipes used to be.

Jordan

Alright.

Richard

Nice. Nice. Okay, a little more. Excellent. Alright. Now hold that valve body in the center of that new opening, okay?

Jordan

Alright. Give me just a second.

Alright. Richard

Now there's a tub spout with a piece of pipe. Stick that through.

Jordan

Okay.

Richard

And have it rest on the bottom and push the spout tight. And let me just mark that. Okay. Now, pull that tub spout back and cut the pipe at the mark, please, and then clean the pipe.

Jordan

Okay. Here it comes.

Richard

Thank you. Hold on. Okay. Now push that all the way in.

Okay. Richard

We're going to have to solder pretty close to this wood. I want to soak it really well. Alright. So here's our new shower arm. I've drilled a hole way up here. That's about 12 inches higher. But to block off the old hole, I'm going to use a thing called a caulk hole cover. Normally, this is used on a stainless-steel sink to cover the hole where a spray hose might go. I've got a little caulking in the back. Alright. Jordan, I want you to catch that nut on the back. Okay?

Go ahead. Jordan

Got it.

Put the nut on it. Jordan

Okay.

Richard

I'm going to feed this riser down to you. Just get it into the top of the shower valve. This piece will run from the valve up to the shower head.

Okay. Richard

Good. Put the shower arm in temporarily to catch the thread, so put it up through and spin. You caught?

Good. Jordan

Got it?

Richard

Yeah. Now we have just one more solder connection to make in the bathroom. I don't want any of these pipes banging around when the water's running, so I'm going to add some blocking between the studs and then secure the pipes to that. Finally, we connect the hot and cold supply lines from the basement back up to the shower. So, here's our cover plate. It has a diverter dial down here that picks between tub spout and showerhead, and on the back, look. There's a nice gasket. You don't have to put caulking. We stick it on here, line up the diverter. Okay. There's a nice cover cap right here. And we hold it with two screws. Okay. Let's get it caught on the top of the tile.

There we go. Richard

Alright. I'll hold it in place, so you get the screws, please. Alright. Homeowners always get the first shot at it. Go ahead. Turn it from cold. Now spin it around a little more is hot. and again, there's a diverter slide at the bottom. That takes it from the spout up there, and you have a pressure-balanced shower valve. You don't have to worry about getting scalded anymore.

Jordan

Thank you so much for coming out to Salt Lake City to fix this problem.

Richard

I couldn't have done it without you. You were awesome. You were great. He was a big help.

Kevin

That was a clever solution you had there.

Richard

I was glad that kitchen cabinet was there.

It helped a lot. Kevin

So, you ran PEX. There was PEX already in the house.

Yeah. Kevin

You ran it the last, but then you used copper for sort of all the assembly. Why not PEX the entire way?

Richard

Well, I could've, but I really like the idea of building a tree, you know, the valve with the branches, the head to give some rigidity, because once you have that inside the wall, you're going to turn that shower valve, and it gives me a chance to anchor it better in the wall. So I don't hate copper inside the wall like that.

Kevin

Skeleton almost to hold stuff.

Richard

That's right. That's right.

Kevin

So, the one bit of soldering you did in the wall where you didn't pre-assemble was that elbow going to the tub spot, right?

Yeah. Kevin

When you put the showerhead in,

it was threaded. Richard

Sure.

Kevin

Why not put the elbow together, solder outside, and then thread into it?

Richard

Good question. I mean, that shower "L" with the thread up here, with the shower arm, it doesn't matter. It can be any length, and you have an escutcheon there to cover it. But with the tub spout, I really wanted that tub spout to be as tight as possible back against the fiberglass. So with him holding it tight against there, I could measure that exactly and make sure I didn't have to caulk that tub spout, so...

Kevin

Because there's not escutcheon plate holding that.

Richard

You could do it the other way, but it just guarantees me a little tighter fit that way.

Kevin

You know your stuff.

Richard

You're getting the hang of it, too.

Kevin

Hey,

Nathan. Nathan

Hey, Kevin.

Kevin

So, it looks like you got Michael's e-mail, Michael from Rhode Island who's got that staircase. Pretty beat up. The finish has been worn off, and they're clearly ready to be redone.

Nathan

They are. They're in desperate need of repair. First thing, the finish is very important on a stair tread. You really want to protect that wood. Once you break through it and water or dirt gets in the grain,

tough to fix them. Kevin

Yeah.

Nathan

But this is a cutaway of a modern stair tread. This is solid nosing, veneer top and bottom, but it still has a solid-oak core to it, so you need to be careful when you're doing a lot of sanding.

Kevin

Don't sand through that, and I think one of the reasons why people don't want to take on this project is because the sanding is fussy, not just for that reason, but you got to go against all of the edges and sometimes around the balustrade spindles.

Lot of tight points. Kevin

Yeah, so Michael wants to know can he do it himself?

Nathan

Definitely, definitely. Any homeowner can do it. I got a couple tricks to show him how.

Kevin

Let's see it.

Nathan

First, I need to strip it down to bare wood.

Kevin

Using what grit?

Nathan

I'm going to start with an 80. In a lot of older homes, you're going to have a lot of built-up poly inside the corners. I'm lightly going to use a scraper to pull that away. In between passes, I like to grab the vacuum and vacuum up all the dust and debris.

Kevin

And how many different grits you going to use?

Nathan

I'm just going to use an 80 and a 120.

Kevin

That's it, huh?

Nathan

Yeah. These are hardworking stairs, you know? They're going to get beat up. They're not a piece of furniture. Now we're ready to add the polyurethane to the tread. But if you want to, this would be a great time before you do to paint your risers or your scotia or even swap the scotia out for some oak if that's your style.

Kevin

Mm-hmm. And you don't need the tape.

Nathan

I got a pretty good brush here and a pretty steady hand, so if you wanted to, you could tape off the edges. If the homeowner wanted to, they could actually change the color of the tread by applying some stain, but you really got to do a good job getting rid of all that old polyurethane. If you don't, that stain won't take to the tread.

Kevin

And then you're going to see it, right? It's just not going to be even.

Nathan

Yeah. It's not going to look clean. And when applying the polyurethane, it's nice to go with the grain and just do nice, even strokes. And when you finish the tread off, do one nice, long passing stroke with the grain.

Kevin

Looking pretty good. So how many coats?

Nathan

I'm going to do three coats. I'm going to let this dry for a couple hours. I'll come in. I'll sand it, tack-cloth it, apply another coat of poly, repeat the process,

and it's all set. Kevin

Alright. Well, I think Michael's got everything he needs, right? He can pull this off, can't he?

Nathan

Absolutely.

Kevin

Alright. Nice job,

man. Nathan

Thank you.

Tom

Brian.

Brian

Hey, Tom, glad you're here.

Nice to be here. Brian

Appreciate it.

Tom

You wrote me about your roof.

Brian

Yes. We've got some moss on the roof. We'd love to have you check it out.

Tom

Alright. Let's take a look. Over here, I'm guessing? Yeah. I can see the trees. That's usually a sign. Anywhere we get shade, you're going to have moss, and you've got moss. I see that.

Brian

Yeah. We got a fair bit of it.

Tom

Yeah. You know, the best thing is to try to get sunlight on the roof. You could could down some trees, but --

Brian

Don't really want to do that. We'd love to keep them, and also, they're our neighbor's trees.

Tom

Yeah. Well, cutting down the trees on this side here is still not going to be enough, because the sun is coming from the other side of the house.

Right. Tom

This little bit of shade that the sun doesn't get will still grow moss. It might not be as bad, but it's still going to grow moss.

Brian

Yeah. Alright. What can we do about it?

Tom

Well, first of all, we have to take it off. The reason we have to take it off is because it's going to shorten the lifetime of your roof. That moss holds moisture when it gets wet longer. The shingle won't dry out, so the shingle gets saturated. That moisture is then transferred to the sheathing, and it could rot the sheathing.

Okay. I don't want that. Tom

No. You don't want that,

so we got to get it off. Brian

Let's get rid of it.

Tom

Okay. Alright, Brian. Working on a roof is dangerous, so we have our harnesses. We have our line, our fall protection, and a bracket that I've screwed to the rafter so that we don't fall.

Okay. Great. Tom

Okay? Now, the first thing we want to do is, we want to lightly sweep off the roof and remove some of the moss.

Brian

Hey, Tom, would you ever use a power washer to get this off?

Tom

Well, as a homeowner, I would say no, because, number one, I wouldn't want a homeowner up on a roof that's wet with a power washer, and you could also damage the roof shingle if the power washer is too strong.

Okay. Tom

And that's why I said to you, we want to sweep it lightly.

Brian

Yeah. Got it.

Tom

It's alright if we don't get all of it. We're really going after the big pieces and kind of the loose pieces.

Brian

Okay.

Tom

Alright. We've removed most of the moss that was on the roof, swept it clean to get rid of the debris. There's still another step that we have to do, but before we do that, I want to install this metal strip right here across the top of the roof.

Brian

What does that do?

Tom

This is actually a zinc strip.

Okay. Tom

And what the zinc does is, it'll be exposed so when the rainwater hits it, the rainwater will take the particulates out of the metal. It will run down the roof, and it will kill off the moss, the lichen,

and the mold. Brian

Really, and that works?

Tom

That works, and so will copper or lead.

Brian

Great.

Tom

Alright. So now you take this roll. You're going to roll it out a little bit, and watch out for the edges, 'cause I don't want you to cut yourself. Get it started right here. Let me get one nail in here before you get too far. Alright. We're just going to use a black roof cement to seal the nail head.

Brian

Great.

Have you do that. Brian

Okay.

Tom

And then what I'm going to do, I'm going to also drive it home, and you're going to put another one on top of it.

Brian

Alright.

Tom

The reason we're face-nailing this and sealing the nail is because we're nailing through the flange, and I'm keeping it up high to the ridge vent. Normally, we could keep it down one or two rows. And that would slide up underneath the shingle, and then the shingle would hide the nail. But your roof has so much moss up under that ridge vent, I felt it better to put it tight to the ridge vent. Alright. Now we're just going to wet down the roof with these pump-up sprays, and we've mixed about 1/3 gallon of bleach to a gallon and a half of water.

Brian

Okay.

Tom

And I had you wet down the grass and the plants down below so that if any bleach spills down there, it won't kill the plants.

Brian

Great. How long will it take to kill all this?

Tom

Oh, it's probably going to take a few days, and before you know it, you won't have any moss. Alright, Brian. It's always good to wash down the plants before and after, especially after, so if we rinse away any of the residue bleach that should come down, you won't kill your plants.

Great. Tom

Now, it's probably going to take a few days for that moss to start dying. Then a good rainstorm will rinse it away,

and it'll be good as new. Brian

Great, and that zinc's going to keep it from coming back, right?

It's supposed to. Brian

Fantastic.

Thanks so much. Tom

My pleasure.

Alright. Tom

It's all yours.

Kevin

Nice job, Tommy. And he seemed like

he was a good helper. Tom

He was a great helper,

and he wasn't afraid of heights. Kevin

Which is not always the case when it comes to homeowners.

Tom

That's right, and I say, if you're a homeowner, and you're afraid of heights, hire a professional. Do not get up there.

Kevin

But if you are willing to get up there, it's about safety. You guys had your harnesses on, which was great. We've seen you wear a couple different kinds -- the one you had on in that piece,

which is a little rope. Tom

The rope and the lanyard.

Kevin

This is a little brake here, right?

Tom

That's right.

Kevin

But you've also worn something like this in the past.

Tom

Yeah, much bigger.

Kevin

And it's like a seat belt, right?

Tom

Yeah. That's retractable, and it has the lanyard right here, but it actually senses a sudden jerk. Yeah. See? It'll grab, so if I started to fall quickly, it would stop me.

Kevin

This is a lot more compact than that. You have a preference?

Tom

Yeah. I prefer the rope as much of a pain it is, but you have to make sure the rope stays out of the way so you don't trip on it, because if you wear this, and it's attached to you, all day long, this is pulling on you, and it's always trying to pull you back up to the roof.

Right. Tom

It's a bit of a pain.

Kevin

I thought you were a pain. That's a bigger pain. Alright. So if you're going to wear either one of these, it all comes down to how you secure it to the roof. You've got a bracket that you've got to get in, and you said go into the rafters.

Tom

You have to go into structure.

Kevin

How do you find the rafter? You're going to use your knuckle again, there, Jedi Knight?

Tom

Well, I could use my knuckle and find it very easily, but you, I don't know. But if you listen -- I listen by sound, and I can actually feel the difference, so start banging.

Banging

Kevin

Oh,

yeah. Tom

Found a rafter right there.

Oh. Tom

So if I continue on -- Oh, there's a rafter there and a rafter there.

Hollow. Kevin

Nice.

Tom

Alright? So the idea of it is, you can go to the home center, and you can buy a starter kit like this.

Right. Tom

And in that starter kit, it gives you pretty much everything you need, from the harness to the bracket that you mount on the roof, the screw, and the rope.

Okay. Tom

Alright? So, this goes on a ridge. There's different types. This one goes over a ridge. You find the rafter. You place it over it, and you put six screws on this side, six screws on that side, and you attach your bracket to it.

Kevin

Great. You survive the day. You don't fall off the roof. Now you got to take that off, and you got 12 holes through your roof.

Tom

12 holes aren't bad. You haven't fallen, and you haven't got hurt, but those 12 holes are easily repaired. You just take -- There's a tube of caulking, and it actually has a roofing mastic in it.

Yeah. Tom

With the tip, you force the caulking into the hole, and you just smooth it over, and that won't leak.

Kevin

Same stuff that you used to seal the nails when you were hammering in that metal strip.

Exactly. Kevin

Awesome. Good information, Tommy. Thank you. Well, we'd love to hear from you, so keep your letters and your e-mails coming. 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"...

Jenn

I'll show you how to set up an indoor garden that can produce fresh vegetables and herbs even when it's cold outside.

Kevin

That is so lush.

Jen

So, yeah, we have the basil. We have the tomatoes, and we have lettuce.

Tom

I'll show you what you need to know about using a hole saw.

Scott

And I'll replace this terra-cotta hearth with something a little more modern. We ended up using a ceramic gray slate tile.

Kevin

I love it.