Mid-Week-end update July 4th

July 4th was marvelous.  We slept in until noon, installed the pot-filler in the afternoon, took a trip to Home Depot, ate dinner at 5 Guys.  It was a great day.

The one big project was the pot filler.  Just a refresher, this is what our potfiller looks like:

The difficulty with installing a pot filler is ensuring the pot filler won’t just rip out of the wall as soon as you extend the arm.  Our pot filler has a long reach, about 30 inches, and for those of you who know about mechanics, that is a long lever-arm.  The torque at the base of the fixture is quite high and most pot fillers do not come with appropriate mounting fixtures.  The base screws into the supply and there is a decorative flange that conceals the joint.  We are using flexible Pex tubing so the pipe offers no structural support.  With copper tubing, we do have the support of the tubing.  If you really want to make everything secure, you should use a drop-ear.

This is basically a brass fitting that attaches to a length of copper pipe and screws to a stud of some kind to add structural support. It keeps the base of the pot from moving side to side quite well but it still doesn’t add much support against the pot-filler sagging. You can pex directly to a drop-ear but we decided to use a 3 foot piece of copper. This allowed us to use brackets to counter-act the lever-arm of the pot filler. We then pexed onto the end of that copper piece.

We used copper holders to secure the length of copper tubing to the wall.

Another necessary evil of putting in the pot filler was running a water-line through an exterior wall. Apparently that’s a no-no up in these cold parts. We lined the cavity with insulating foam and used Great Stuff to fill in any cracks.

My plans are to rent the room in case I do need the extra cash flow but i’ll see how it goes. Renting can be a bit iffy with a family so our tenant is going to have to be background checked and preferably female. We could use a service like Houston Tenant Screening Services to help us out, but its up in the air!

Overall, quite effective and we think it will hold up to lots of pot-filling in the future.

Sarah