…not to do what I have done.
Of all the plumbing mistakes I have built into my infrastructure, this is the one I wish I could turn back time and fix. Because I can’t fix it any other way.
What’s wrong with this picture, boys and girls?
If you said, “Wow, you idiot, you put all the plumbing on the shady side of the tank! You’ll never live long enough for all that to thaw if it freezes!” you win.
So when my very simple valve-removal process went (immediately) wrong and forced me to chop out otherwise perfectly good portions of the manifold I’d much rather have left alone, I was digging out big ice chunks that would have been loose dry dirt weeks ago if I’d only set the tank so the manifold was on the sunny side.
Granted that there was a reason for doing it that way, in long bitter repeated hindsight it wasn’t nearly as good as the reason to not do it that way. But what the hell, here we are.
And why did I have to cut out the portion of the manifold containing the (yes, it really is) broken valve? Well…
This is a smaller boo-boo of the “live and learn” variety. I’ll never do this again, but this time there was no way to spin the valve off the pipe without cutting up the manifold. So when I rebuild it – which will only take a few minutes – I’ll leave more room between the valves. It just looked neater this way, I guess.
Actually, unless you put a union:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Homewerks-Worldwide-1-in-PVC-Sch-40-Union/50160551
upstream and downstream of those valves, you will STILL end up cutting PVC and eventually run out of room to splice back in to the line.
NPT male on line out of tank.
Threaded PVC Union
NPT male to slip connector
PVC pipe
SlipxSlipxSlip female tee
First leg:
PVC pipe
Slip PVC Union
PVC pipe
NPT male to slip connector
Threaded (Ball) valve
NPT male to slip connector
PVC pipe run
Second leg:
PVC pipe
PVC elbow
PVC pipe
Slip PVC Union
PVC pipe
NPT male to slip connector
Threaded (Ball) valve
NPT male to slip connector
PVC pipe run
There are other different ways you can set that up, but you need those unions in there so you can unthread those valves when you need to replace them. Remember that the PVC pipe thread direction runs the same on BOTH ends of the valves, so if you don’t have the unions in there as you try to loosen the connection at one end of the valve, you are tightening it on the other end. And vice versa.
Is it possible to set up some kind of reflectors to throw sunlight onto the shady side of the tank?
Empty green tank, get jeep, wrap rope, hitch and pull then rotate 90 degrees, problem solved. A bit of re-routing of the lines, using black PVC on the sunny side and you should be good to go.
Some reason why you just can’t reroute the piping up and over?
Mark is right- unions (not the jimmy Hoffa kind) are your friend when there is *any* possibility of future disassembly.
Another interesting gadget of which I was not aware . . .
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Homewerks-Worldwide-1-in-PVC-Sch-40-Coupling/50160519
Appears to be handy for repairing broken pipes, but NOT a substitute for a union.
More shovel work, but easier than rotating the tank: how deep would the lines on the shady side have to go to prevent freezing? Alternatively, how much dirt would have to be pile don the pipe to do it? (That assumes the connection to the tank is below grade to begin with).
One trick used “up north” is bury pipe deeper AND put a couple inches of insulation in the dirt over the pipe, far enough below grade to avoid damage from the usual sources (again, this assumes it’s not possible/advisable/whatever to bury below the established frost line).
Norman, that’s the approach I took several years ago, and it generally works. Unfortunately in this case I needed to dig quite a lot of the dirt to find my shut-off valve because its marker somehow wandered off. I covered those two valves with a can and covered the can (along with everything else) with quite a lot of dirt back when I still had a backhoe/loader to make it easy.
We don’t need to bury pipes as deep as you guys in the winter states do; 10-12 inches is fine. Nights can get very cold but winter in general is episodic and the sun on the dirt can be very warm even on cold days. Everything would have been better had we only done all this on the sunny side of the tank.
Between now and Spring I’m making quite a few modifications based on lessons learned, and the most obvious is turn the tank around – hell, 45 degrees would do. But even though the tank is empty of water it probably has a ton of sediment in the bottom: I can’t budge it by hand. I’m going to dig out the rest of the manifold if the weather stays fair and see how hard it would be to disconnect it from the tank – I didn’t do that part – and then maybe play with roping the Jeep to it. But we’re on the only level bit and close to a drop-off, so I’m going to approach that idea very skeptically. I can’t afford to replace that tank.
It would make sense to muck out the tank before you try to move it (NOT a solo job!). But I can’t imagine doing that nasty/wet job during the winter. Yea, I know that your tank is empty now, but could you just reconnect your pipes for now and then deal with turning the tank after the weather becomes a bit more temperate? Also, when you try to turn the tank, use the Jeep as an anchor point perhaps, but I suggest a hoist to do the actual pulling. It would give you a chance to see what is happening inch-by-inch and allow you to pull, prod, and lever as necessary.
Joel, stop immediately and go get unions before you finish. One on each side of the valve. Otherwise you’ll have to cut them out, anyway.
My take is a bit contrary. Hacksaws are cheap and common, as are glue-on pvc fittings. Unions not so much. A pvc union my well not be reusable after a few years in the ground anyhow, so I just use glue fittings when I can. That said, in old underground work you will want some slide-on repair couplings.
Hey Joel,
I’m a bit late to this little party but I have some advice if you ever encounter this problem in the future. If you’d removed the bonnet, stem and gate off of one of the valves you would’ve had plenty of room to spin said valve off without hitting the other valve. The other valve would then have nothing preventing it from being easily removed. When installing the new valves the process would be the reverse – spin 1st one on whole then remove the 2nd valves bonnet, spin it on and reassemble.
Jack
Well, OK, I’m confused.
RE: valves/manifold (everything below assumes PVC) – if the base run of the “manifold” is long enough to allow the length of a wrench – say, 24″ – between perpendicular connections, why would it ever have to be shortened? To replace valves the perpendicular runs would have to be cut, but with the “latest technology” – called a “coupling” – one can just keep adding length as necessary, assuming one realizes that cutting below the “coupling” is necessary to prevent shortening the pipe length above the coupling. I mention this because I’ve never seen problems with properly installed cast iron unions, even long-buried ones, but I’ve seen what frost heaves do to plastic and I’m suspicious about the longevity of PVC unions in a hostile environment.
If one is absolutely, positively dedicated to cutting the PVC above the coupling, then at some point the “manifold” will have to be reconstructed, but with PVC that’s a trivial task.
Second, valves do not have to be installed side-by-side; they’ll work just fine when staggered apart on the perpendicular runs to allow “wrench room” between them (just don’t tell the valves they’re not side-by-side and they’ll probably never notice….). Does make it harder to enclose both simultaneously, but there may be an advantage in not doing so.
As for moving the tank, I can’t remember what you said the capacity is, but a quick search on AlGore’s InterTubes says a 3000 gallon above ground tank is ~400 lbs. Not trivial, but no need for a 10-ton crane, either. As for the 2K lbs of sediment, is there way way to clean most of it out? Given a large enough access, shovel and bucket might be possible, or while piping is disconnected, might there be a way to flush it? (And, might there be a way to incorporate an external pre-tank sediment “filter” of some kind? (A series of 55 gallon poly drums comes to mind, but that moves a lot of the piping above ground.) I gather what’s in the tank is never used for drinking, so maintaining potability wouldn’t be a primary concern.
As for rotating the tank, I’d think using the Jeep – maybe – as an anchor point for a come-along might be safer than using it for motive power, and a post hole digger and post could be substituted to gain better position. If there’s an anchor point available, wrapping a tow strap 3/4 around the tank and “unwinding” it a little at a time with a come-along seems more controllable. IIRC, you said 45-90 degrees is all you need. As the tank rotates, though, it may “unlevel” itself if the ground isn’t secure.
Please remember that BOTH ends of fittings threaded to NPT are right hand. If you try to unscrew one end, you are simultaneously screwing the other end tighter.
Also remember that cutting a piece of PVC and then replacing it later adds another coupling into the run. And you lose about 2″ of pipe in the process, if you have to cut out another coupling to do it. Of course, if you’ve got enough length between the couplings, you can do so several times. But the unions, especially if you use threaded unions, make life a WHOLE lot simpler. And I’m willing to feed the cookie jar again if Joel decides to use unions and is short of $$$ to do so. Three PVC threaded unions ain’t that much. And if he does them like they’re supposed to be done, and buries them below the frost line, then they’ll last forever. Might need to eventually replace the o-ring seal on the union face, but that’s no big deal. And as he gets older, less work is desirable!