Pressure Test

We finished up running all the plumbing supply hot and cold lines to all the bathrooms, kitchens, ice makers, and to the washer and to the dryer. Tell me I'm not the last person on earth to learn that dryers need water lines too?

Isn't it called a DRY-er??? As in it dries things? Then why the heck does it need a water line? How possibly can you dry clothes better by adding water?

Even though it makes no sense, we put the water lines in because it's certainly easier to do it now, than to add one later on, after drywall is up.

All the water lines are brought in neatly to the main plumbing manifolds in the garage wall. We placed the manifolds right under the bathroom, very close to the kitchens, so this actually went pretty fast. By drilling holes in the sides of the studs, we can get the plumbing supply lines neatly directed right to the manifolds. It's going to get buried behind drywall, but at least I know it's neat and tidy in the wall.

Are you like me? Even though you know you'll never see it again, you gotta be neat? Tell me I'm not the only one that paints the underside of furniture ... just because ... you will know it's not painted?

See the blue gauge on top of the manifold? It measures air pressure. It's got an air inlet at top and you add air to the water lines. If there's a leak, the pressure gauge won't hold and you'll see it drop, signaling you messed up somewhere.

But before we can fill up the lines with air, we have to connect all the water lines by crimping them to the valves and stub outs. The manifold above is done.

Where water is needed, we need plumbing stub-outs. We attach to the studs in the wall a bracket and place the stub-outs in them. Notice the ends of the stub outs are sealed? This is so you can pressure test for leaks, and then when you hook up your sink, you just cut the end off and hook up faucets. Or washers. Or refrigerators. Or, yes, dryers.

But on the bottom, open end, we'll need to crimp the white supply lines on that will eventually bring the water to the stub-outs.

On one end, we prep the tubing with the crimping tool.

Can you see the tubing is flared out now?

The flared end fits over the fitting

And then you slide the ring over the flared end.

And then that piece is crimped into place to seal the deal.

That's the cold.

And then we do the hot, and then move on to the next water line.

This actually goes really fast, and before we knew it, all of the water lines were crimped and we were ready for the pressure test.

We start at zero.

And add pressure up to 100 pounds per square inch.

Do we have a leak?

We were scoring a hundred, but now it's saying more like a 92.  And this is a test, 100 is a perfect score, but 92 doesn't cut it.  We've got a leak and we've flunked.

Now we have to find the leaks.

The Ram sprayed the connections with a soapy water mixture.

Not the shower fixture.  Whew.  That would be a tough one to get to.

But suddenly, bubbles started growing around some of the joints under the fridge water box.

When air leaks out of a joint, it causes the soapy water to bubble.  We've got leaks.  And lots of them.

All of the leaks were coming from the joints made with the teflon tape.  None of the solder or crimped joints caused us any problems.  

So it was a matter of taking apart each leaky connection,

Reapplying tape and tightening the joint again, and then pressure testing again.

And doing that until there were no more bubbles.  

And the pressure held at 100PSI.

And we finally passed! Yay!!!!  

Our plumbing lines are ready for water, and we are ready to move on to the next step - the phone and networking and tv lines.  With all the big mechanical steps taken care of, it's exciting to think drywall is actually going to happen!