;)

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Nothing like an evening of laying pipe to make one feel like they’ve accomplished something. ;)

Unfortunately it’s not done. Well, not quite…

See, for some reason around 9pm I decided to start poking at running the water line in the wall. Well, a little over two hours later and it’s almost done. I’ve got the full length of water line hooked up, into the wall, into the little box, and everything is pressurized. All leaks are corrected, and I’m letting it go until tomorrow before I mount things for good. This means cutting the pipe to length, fastening the box together (read: gluing / epoxying, since I modified it all to be like a sort-of old work box), doing a final routing on the pipe, and cleaning up. I also need to pick up some of the little metal straps used for nailing such pipe to the joists.

I must say, I think it’ll be pretty nice… Instead of a wee stub of pipe poking up through the tile or out of the wall and hooking on to things, there will be a plastic box mounted in the wall about twelve inches above the floor recessed into the wall behind where the fridge goes with a valve inside of it. Then a flexible jumper hose (I got a six foot stainless steel braided one which won’t get pinched) connects from there to the fridge. Yes, it’s more joints and one more valve, but it really seems like the most elegant solution.

The only thing that I’ve got left to figure out is how to stick the trim ring for the box on to the box itself. I’m thinking I’ll use hot melt glue, because it should hold solidly, shouldn’t soften, works well on plastic, and can (generally) be removed should the need arise. All that is needed to hold the box is the trim ring, because it’ll fall into the wall if pushed, so the ring will hold it nicely. I’m just afraid of leaks so I’m not putting it together yet… Oh, the reason I had to mount it this way as opposed to something easier, is all the ice maker supply boxes seem designed for new construction. I ended up with this one here, the I2K from Oatey and I had to modify it a good bit so that it fit my needs. It should work out well, though.

But anyway, click the picture above and you can see some of the images I grabbed while installing the water line.

Goodnight. :)