ASK This Old House | Weird Shower Valve, Mossy Roof (S18 E14) FULL EPISODE

[Music] today on ask this old house and we had a plumber come out to fix the leak they wanted to take three thousand dollars rip everything out the surround and replace it with with brand new stuff and we just felt like that was a little bit too much yeah so we wanted a second opinion 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 i'll show you how to refinish worn out stair treads finish is very important on a scared tread you really want to protect that wood once you break through it water dirt gets to the grain tough to fix them and this garage roof is covered in moss but the solution is pretty simple 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 emails coming where are you sneaking off to mr city see this viewer sent that oh my goodness yeah what are you gonna do about that well it's a pretty common problem a lot of people have it check in with me later and i'll show you you think you can fix it huh oh i can fix it of course he can fix it hey richard how you doing good morning finally going for that plumber's license look i flunked 25 times after all these years no actually we got an email from a homeowner that had a shower valve that they wanted repaired and i i had never seen the valve ever before i've searched everything i've sent this to every friend of mine in the industry a valve you've never i have not so that says something i think we're doomed we're going to have to go there and replace it and where is there salt lake city right on the way home [Music] you must be jordan richard welcome to salt lake city nice to be here uh my family and i have lived in this house for about two years i've got a three-year-old and a six-year-old oh boy that must be exciting it's very exciting uh we've got a couple of problems we want to show you all right come on in let's go place looks great in here have you done any of the work yeah we've done all the painting in the house and a few other small projects are out great it's a 1944 bungalow all right 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 shower head 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 and to fix the leak they wanted to take three thousand dollars rip everything out the surround and replace it with with brand new stuff and we just felt like that was a little bit too much yeah so we wanted a second opinion all right let me peek in there 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 velvet looks like so it's got hot and cold pipes that probably come in this way you just mix the hot and the cold and it comes down to the tub spout or goes up to the shower head 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 you imagine you got two young kids right i do 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 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 that sounds great all right well let me run down the basement turn off the water all right the water shut off and i've learned a lot about your house okay somebody has replaced almost every inch of the piping in this building with pecs and that's good except for one spot can you guess where right behind the shower here 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 short period of time right around the 40s you said 1944 here right yep 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 was also could only be connected by cutting and threading and using two wrenches okay so this is no longer used has 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 two thirds 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 on to that i can't get two wrenches to tie on to 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 what the plumbers were 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 put we could put that shower head at any height you want right great and then we put it right back up and cover the hole you up for that yeah let's do it i could do it for maybe 2 500. now you can watch this old house and ask this old house anytime anywhere download our new app to stream full episodes to your tablet your tv and your phone binge classic episodes catch up on recent renovations and get step-by-step health projects all around the house best of all it's free the most trusted home improvement information is now available on amazon fire tv roku apple tv ios and android devices download the thistle house streaming app today 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 [Music] do this one 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 [Music] here's away valve put that in your memory drawer then we cut an access panel on the other side of the wall in the kitchen [Music] there we go look what we found here's a piece of the galvin 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 all right we've got a new hole drilled for the new height of the shower arm here's the old one right here all right jordan i'm going to drop this whole valve assembly down to you try to get it into the pipes down into the holes where the galvanized pipes used to be all right nice nice okay a little more excellent all right now hold that valve body in the center of that new opening okay all right give me just a second all right all right now there's a tub spot with a piece of pipe stick that through okay 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 okay here it comes thank you hold on okay now push that all the way in okay i'm gonna have to solder pretty close to this wood i want to soak it really well all right 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 the thing called a cockhole 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 all right jordan i want you to catch that nut on the back okay go ahead got it put the nut on it okay i'm gonna 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 good put the shower arm in temporarily and to catch the thread so put it up through and spin you caught good got it yep now we're just one more sort of connection to making 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 shower head and on the back look it's a nice gasket you don't have to put caulking we stick it on here line up the diverter there's a nice cover cap right here and we hold it with two screws let's get it caught on the top of the tile there we go all right i'll hold it in place you get the screws please [Music] all right homeowners always get the first shot at it go ahead turn it to from cold now spin it around a little more it's hot all right then there's a diverter slide at the bottom it takes it from the spout up there and you have a pressure balance shower valve you don't worry about getting scalded anymore thank you so much for coming out to salt lake city to fix this problem i couldn't have done it with that you were awesome you were great he was a big help that was a clever uh solution you had there i was glad that kitchen cabinet was there it helped a lot so you ran packs there was packs already in the house you ran at the last but then you used copper for sort of all the assembly why not pex the entire way well i could have but i really like the idea of building a tree you know the the valve with the with the branches that hit 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 i don't hate copper inside the wall skeleton almost that's right that's right so the the one bit of saturn you did in the wall where you didn't pre-assemble was that elbow going to the tub spout right when you put the shower head in it was threaded sure why not put the elbow together solder outside and then thread into it good question i mean that shower l with the thread up here but the shower arm 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 that tub spot because there's not a discussion place that's right you could do it the other way but it just it guarantees me a little tighter fit that way you know your stuff you're getting the hang of it too [Music] want to tackle all your home improvement projects with confidence join this old house insider a new streaming service from this old house the iconic emmy-winning series that inspired a generation of home enthusiasts stream over 1 000 episodes of this old house and ask this old house commercial free watch it all in the this old house app and join live online q and a's with our experts best of all you can try insider free for seven days to join go to thisoldhousemembership.com hey nathan hey kevin so it looks like you got michael's email 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 they are they're in desperate need of repair um first thing the finish is very important on a stair tread you really want to protect that wood once you break through it water dirt gets into the grain tough to fix them yeah 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 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 a lot of tight points yeah so michael wants to know can you do it himself definitely definitely any homeowner can do it i got a couple tricks to show them how let's see first i need to strip it down to bare wood using what grit 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 and how many different grits you're going to use i'm just going to use an 80 and a 120. that's it huh yeah these are hard working 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 scooch out for some oak if that's your style and you don't you don't need the tape 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 and then you're going to see it right it's just not going to be even 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 looking pretty good so how many coats i'm gonna do three coats i'm gonna 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 he's all set all right well i think michael's got everything he needs right he can pull this off can he absolutely all right nice job man thank you brian hey tom glad you're here nice to be here appreciate it you wrote me about your roof yes we've got some moss on the roof we'd love to have you check it out all right let's take a look over here yeah you can see the trees that's usually a sign anyway we get shade you're going to have moss and you've got moss i see that yeah we got we got a fair bit of it yeah you know the best thing is to try to get sunlight on the roof you could cut down some trees but don't really want to do that we'd love to keep them and they're also they're our neighbors trees yeah well cutting down the trees on this side here is still not going to be enough okay because the sun is coming from the other side of the house 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 a lot all right what can we do about it well you 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 it doesn't the shingle won't dry out so the shingle gets saturated that moisture is then transferred to the sheathing and it could rot the sheet okay i don't want that no you don't want that so we got to get it off let's get rid of it okay all right 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 okay now the first thing we want to do is we want to lightly sweep off the roof and remove some of the moss hey tom would you ever use a power washer to get this off well as a homeowner i would say no because number one i wouldn't want a homeowner up on a roof that's wet right with a power washer and you could also damage the roof shingle if the power washer is too strong okay and that's why i said to you we want to sweep it lightly yeah got it it's all right if we don't get all of it we're really going after the big pieces and kind of the loose piece okay all right we'll remove 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 what does that do this is actually a zinc strip and what the zinc does is it'll be exposed so when the rainwater hits it the rainwater will take the particulites out of the metal it will run down the roof it will kill off the moss the lychen and the mold really that works that works and so will copper or lead great all right so now you take this roll you're gonna roll it out a little bit watch out for the edges because i don't want you to cut yourself get it started right here let me get one nail in here too far all right we're just going to use a black roof cement to seal the nail head great if you do that okay 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 right 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 okay and that would slide up underneath the shingle and then the shingle would hide the nail but your roof had so much moss up under that ridge vent i felt it better to put it tight to the ridge vent all right now we're just going to wet down the roof with these pump up sprays and we've mixed about a third of a gallon of bleach to a gallon and a half of water okay and i had you wet down the grass and the plants down the blow so that if any bleach spills down there it won't kill the plant right how long will it take to kill all this oh it's probably going to take a few days and before you know it you won't have any moss all right 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 you come down you won't kill your plants great 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's be good as new great and that zinc is going to keep it from coming back right it's supposed to fantastic thanks so much my pleasure all right it's all yours nice job tommy and he seemed like he was a good helper he was a great helper and he wasn't afraid of heights which is not always the case when it comes to homeowners that's right if i say if you're a homeowner and you're afraid of heights hire a professional do not get up there but if you are willing to get up there it's about safety you guys had your harnesses on which is great um we've seen you wear a couple of different kinds the one you had on in that piece open the lanyard that's a little break here right that's right but you've also worn something like this in the past yeah much bigger and it's like a seat belt right yeah that's a retractable uh and it has a lanyard right here but it actually senses a sudden jerk yeah see it'll grab so if i started to fall quickly it would it would stop me this is a lot more compact than that you have a preference 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 it's a bit of a pain well i thought you were a pain that's a bigger pain all right so if you're going to wear either one of these it all comes down to how you secure it to the roof um you've got a bracket that you've got to get in and you said go into the rafters you have to go into structure how do you find the rafters you're going to use your knuckle again there jedi well i could use my knuckle and find her very easily but you you i don't know but if you listen i listen by sound and i and i i can actually feel the difference so start banging oh yeah there's a rafter right there so if i continue on oh there's a rafter there and a raptor there hollow all right so the idea of it is you can go to the home center and you can buy a starter kit like this and in that car 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 all right 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 you put six screws on this side six screws on that side and you attach your bracket to it 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 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 cocky tube of caulking and it actually has a roofing mastic in it with the tip you force the caulking into the hole and you just smooth it over and that won't leak same stuff that you use to seal the nails when you're hammering in that metal strap exactly awesome good information tommy thank you well we'd love to hear from you so keep your letters and your emails coming until next time i'm kevin o'connor and i'm tom silver for ask the sold house thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every home improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like what you see click on the subscribe button make sure that you get our newest videos right in your feed

Channel: This Old House

Views: 195,317

Rating: 4.9280901 out of 5

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Electrical, Heath Eastman, Lighting, Nathan Gilbert, Richard Trethewey, Ross Trethewey, Smart homes, Technology, Tom Silva, Tools, Woodworking, ask this old house tv, full episode, shower valve

Id: N9a2huwDk3E

Length: 23min 58sec (1438 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021