One of the first things we noticed about the house was that our water pressure was very, very low. The kitchen sink barely even dripped! Everything else came out as a trickle. We deduced (i.e. were told by people who know these things) that our old galvanized plumbing had corroded (which occurs from the inside-out) and had dramatically narrowed from 1" diameter. Well, this certainly turned out to be true:
That's not mud in there, that's solid corrosion, or mineral deposit, or something....gross! There were other pipes in worse shape (sorry a little out of focus):
In Michigan, getting to the water supply between the city water meter and your house would be a huge undertaking, probably requiring the renting or hiring of large equipment to do some digging. Not here in Florida! Nothing freezes, so they bury pipes less than three feet in the ground. I was able to dig most of the old pipe up within a couple of hours. Here's the pipe where it enters the house, the white pvc is just a sprinkler line running along the house; you can barely see the old water main in the dirt. The shutoff valve is barely visible behind the sprinkler head:
The other thing that would never happen in Michigan is being able to crawl under your house and access all your plumbing! (unless you had a basement or something) In our house, all of the pipes are hanging from the floor joists. Fortunately, the previous owners had replaced all of the galvanized line that led into the house, so we only had replace the main line that ran about 40' in a straight line from the front of the house towards the back. We wouldn't have gotten anywhere without the help and advice from our buddy Kevin, pictured here under the house, with his two sons, Owen and Miles. He pretty much rules.
Along with Kevin and the boys, you can see the old line lying on the ground while a new section of pvc is in place.
This is the entrance we used, you can see the new shutoff valve and hose bib. Closeup to follow:
Here's part of the finished product, the new pvc line ready to be buried:
Here's the new ball valve and hose bib. Looks awesome!!!
Crawling around under the house was dirty!! It took a long time to scrub away this crud!:
Here's some more random photos:
