Water Heater

The water heater is finished and ready to be used this spring.  After this picture was taken, the line for the pressure relief valve was run through the floor and out the side of the house.  The old sealant was also cleaned up on the flew about a foot down from the ceiling.  After hooking everything up correctly, I had to drop the chimney down almost a foot from the roof down through the ceiling.  That turned out to be a good thing, it was pretty tall.

I have attempted to put the drain system under pressure, but I have a leak somewhere.  So I will have to fill it all with water in the spring to find the leak before I call for my plumbing inspection.

Plumbing

The drain lines and vents for the washer and utility sink are mostly complete.  One of the lines didn't turn out quite right under the house, It has a slight uphill slope...  Oops!  I will need to redo it before the inspection.  Right now I'm working on the drywall behind the water heater so I can get that permanently installed.

Water Heater

I finally got around to plumbing in the new water heater.  Because this is in the girls bedroom closet, we had to use a mobile home unit.  They have a sealed combustion system that draws air in from the outside and exhausts everything out the roof.

I still need to add the drain pan, air intake kit on the bottom and the final touches on the venting out the top.  Just out of the frame is the vent pipe that goes out the roof.  I just need to get a couple 45s and some straight pipe to hook it all up.

The HVAC inspector told me if we didn't have the mobile home approved unit, we would have to seal the closet doors and add springs so they were self closing.

Floor Support

The main cabin was built with 2x8 floor joists spanning the 18' wide cabin 24" apart.  That does not make for a very solid floor.  There were cinder block columns under every 3rd joist, but that didn't help all that much.  There were some pretty good waves in the floor.  This new beam has not only flattened out all the waves, but the floor has far less flex as well.

Floor Joists

When the addition was built back in the late 60s, the lighter colored 2x10 was simply nailed to the darker colored 2x8 and the floor joists were nailed to the 2x10.  Over the years, both the 2x10 and the floor joist have sagged.  I added some bolts to strengthen the joint between the 2x10 and the 2x8.  I also jacked up all the joists and added hangers on each one.  Things are much more solid now.

At some point there were lag bolts added through the 2x10 and into the end-grain of the joists as well as some 2x4 joist hangers.  Since the joists were not jacked back up before these things were done, the floor was still in pretty rough shape.  Here you can see the joist has been jacked back up with the new 2x10 joist hanger attached using structural screws.