Replies

1. 
   Guest_ | May 28, 1999 04:23pm | #10

   *
   Sink base is installed against an exterior wall. Supplies and drain come up through floor rather than in from rear (which would put piping in exterior wall). My guess is supplies were intentionally done that way to avoid freezing problems and waste was a retrofit to replace scaled up galvanized with copper without pulling the base and opening up the wall.

   The easiest, most straight forward way to remove the old base and install new would seem to be to lift out and drop into place over the pipes rather than sliding into place. But, that requires two people.

   The staging of this project may require that the old base be pulled to allow new flooring and electric upgrade to be done and put temporarily back in place while the new cabinets are fabricated. So that's pull out and reinstall the old base, then pull it out again and install the new base.

   Any suggestions? Is it a plumbing solution or a cabinet solution?

1. 
   Guest_ | May 23, 1999 08:57pm | #1

   *This sounds like old kitchens I've seen where the drain is not vented properly - an s-trap situation. Will you also be adding a vent?

1. 
   Guest_ | May 23, 1999 09:28pm | #2

   *Cut large holes in bottom of cabinet then will be able to reinstall easily. Trap may be under house but generally not allowed as far as i know. If you have to fix plumbing anyway fix before installing new cabinet so that you can slide it in easily. Assuming you have access under house shouldnt be a major plumbing job, vent may be hidden in wall. You should be able to tell when you remove cabinet first time so that you can do it right when the new base is ready.

1. 
   Guest_ | May 23, 1999 09:32pm | #3

   *Can you get to the lines from below, i.e., crawl space or basement. If so, you should be able to cut out and replace the supply lines whout much problem. From your plan, you may have to do it twice but this is not much of a job. The drain is more problamatic. From your description it sounds like there may be an abandoned drain in the exterior wall. With the base pulled away you may be able to pull off the wall covering (below the counter top level) and properly reconstruct the drain.

1. 
   bullet | May 24, 1999 05:38am | #4

   *it's a trade coordination problem. getting a decent plumber, an electrician and a cabinetmaker to show up on the same day is no mean feat.

2. 
   Guest_ | May 24, 1999 06:17am | #5

   *Cabinet solution: My workaround was to buy a sink front -- the faceframe without the box. (If the sink base isn't on the end with framed cabinets, it really doesn't do that much support.) The bottom comes separate. We have the same deal, old galvanized in the wall, copper upgrade ... now PVC. When I get around to making it pretty (yes, my house), I'll cut small oak "moldings" to close around the pipes on the sink floor. And glue in oak veneer pieces to make interior cabinet sides. Some day.Venting was an issue. I used an "island sink" vent as detailed in "Code Check" -- the vent pipe goes into the floor too.

3. 
   Guest_ | May 24, 1999 03:51pm | #6

   *Hmmmm. Now I'll have to double check. There is a vent stack through the roof above the fixture. Knowing the contractor who did the re-fit 25 years ago I'm sure they properly vented the fixture. So maybe the waste does go into the wall, which makes cabinet installation easier.

4. 
   Guest_ | May 24, 1999 05:37pm | #7

   *Why not pull the old cabinet out, open up the wall and find out what is in there. It won't take a lot of work to do a reasonable repair to the wall since it's not going to be in view later. You may find that with a less work than all that through the floor monkey business, you can put a drain back inside the wall making it easier to do the cabinet swapping. If you do this after you pull the old cabinet the first time you're not out that much time and materials if you end up just closing up the wall again. If you find discontinued piping in the wall it may have been cut off just because it was easier to bring new up through the floor than work inside the wall with the old cabinet in place. Since you have to pull the cabinet out anyway, you don't have that disadvantage. If you have an S-trap under the sink instead of a P-trap on a vented drain line, you're going to have to make changes anyway since S-traps a generally not legal unless it's an existing installation. Once you start retrofitting it's not considered existing and you're obligated to bring it up to code.

5. 
   Guest_ | May 24, 1999 09:10pm | #8

   *Maybe that's why I didn't see this as a problem. In the work I do I am the plumber, the electrician, and the cabinet maker.I fail to see why many in the trades refuse to become "cross-trained." Example - tile people don't do plumbing; General Contarctors taht are really framers; Trim carpenters that couldn't make a cabinet to save their lives, etc.-Rob

6. 
   Guest_ | May 25, 1999 05:20am | #9

   *You called it right Bill. The '73 re-hab had abandoned the '38 galvanized drain and vent in the wall and run new copper from the trap, through the floor to the drain line. Last week I increased the lower part of that drain line from 1.5" to 2" in prep for a new washer hook up. When I filled the sink and pulled the plug to check for leaks, there was a noticeable sucking sound as the last water left the sink. Now it makes sense: no vent!Opened the wall and the vent is still there. So at least I don't have to run a vent all the way up through the wall and roof, just tie in the new trap arm.The whole job was a little goofy. No shut offs on the supplies except the ones in the sink base. So to remove them I had to shut off the whole house. Installed accessible shut offs to isolate the fixture and in the process noticed the supplies went up through the floor hot/right and cold left. The faucet was hot/left cold/right and so were the supplies in the sink base. They had criss-crossed the supplies in the space above the floor and below the cabinet base! Had to open the space and get the mess out to get the cabinet out.

7. 
   Guest_ | May 28, 1999 04:23pm | #11

   *DONE! Trap arm into wall, drain down, vent up then over to meet the abandoned 2" galvanized vent through roof. Of course there was the abandoned galvanized drain to remove and the hole to plug to keep the mice out. And two studs that had been cut to run the horizontal 2" galvaniized pipe (about 1/2" left to carry load!) that had to be sistered. And the 'old work' electric boxes that had been wired by snaking through the wall in the the middle of all this. And the new drain down through the wall plate fell on top of half the rim joist so that needed some extra work to get the drain down there. Whew, it's no wonder the last guys just went down through the floor.The supplies were re-routed, will come up through floor to avoid freezing in exterior wall. Unions below floor in crawl space; risers with shut offs and adapter for flexible sink supplies and DW supply can just be pulled up and out to allow old cabient to slide out and new cabinet in, then rehooked.Glad I'm not paying myself at an hourly rate for a DIY kitchen! Anyway, it's done right.