The Quest Pipes At 321.
Oct. 2nd, 2023 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickIf you are not up to speed on the overall shittiness of Quest Pipe, you can take it as read that Quest Pipe is a shitty product that will fail, many times. There were lawsuits about it and everything. Now, as you know, Bob, I do landlording stuff in my day job. One of the buildings that we have is called 321 because that is its street number. Anyway, there is Quest pipe in 321. It has failed repeatedly since the 1980's when it was installed.
This may come as news to some of you, but plumbing is generally contained within the walls of a building. Tearing out all the plumbing and replacing it with new is a non-trivial activity even if it is craptacular plumbing that you would do well to remove. It's not fun. So, we've been repairing it when it breaks and kind of hoping it will not break any more. This has been a spectacularly unsuccessful strategy to date.
This past Sunday afternoon, my tenant at 321 called to tell me that her bedroom ceiling was dripping. (She's been there for a couple of years and this is her second Quest Pipe failure. She knows the drill.) Prior to her, there have been like... a bunch of other Quest Pipe failures. Basement, twice (one hot and one cold), patched with very long lengths of Pex and sharkbites which is why there have not been more basement failures -- those were easy to fix and so we did them. One in the sewer drop box (water lines and sewer lines run from basement to second floor in this box) last winter. One in the ceiling (Mrs. Ihrie as tenant), one in the ceiling (Not Mrs. Ihrie and not current tenant, one of the ones in between), and then this one in the ceiling. Oh, and the toilet supply line at the corner of the sewer drop. So... seven? Since 2007 there have been 7 of these instances of Quest Pipe Failure with attendant flooding and drywalling and ugh. I have had enough of this and I am done with this fucking shitshow of defective pipe. So done. Completely done.
Today I tore apart all the wall and ceiling needed to access 100% of the Quest pipe in the building. All of the shit pipe at 321 has now been replaced by modern Pex with crimp joints. It's been pressurized and carefully checked over for leaks. There are no leaks. I can plumb things. I am not (generally) an idiot. Also it's pex, which is hard to fuck up.
I still have to patch the drywall, though. It was fairly damp today, so I figured it could have another day to dry out some before I tried to patch to it and so forth. That's going to be tomorrow and probably Wednesday (just pasting and waiting for it to dry while I go do other things) and then I can prime and paint on Thursday.
While this is a gigantic pain in my ass, it will be a gift that keeps on giving.
This may come as news to some of you, but plumbing is generally contained within the walls of a building. Tearing out all the plumbing and replacing it with new is a non-trivial activity even if it is craptacular plumbing that you would do well to remove. It's not fun. So, we've been repairing it when it breaks and kind of hoping it will not break any more. This has been a spectacularly unsuccessful strategy to date.
This past Sunday afternoon, my tenant at 321 called to tell me that her bedroom ceiling was dripping. (She's been there for a couple of years and this is her second Quest Pipe failure. She knows the drill.) Prior to her, there have been like... a bunch of other Quest Pipe failures. Basement, twice (one hot and one cold), patched with very long lengths of Pex and sharkbites which is why there have not been more basement failures -- those were easy to fix and so we did them. One in the sewer drop box (water lines and sewer lines run from basement to second floor in this box) last winter. One in the ceiling (Mrs. Ihrie as tenant), one in the ceiling (Not Mrs. Ihrie and not current tenant, one of the ones in between), and then this one in the ceiling. Oh, and the toilet supply line at the corner of the sewer drop. So... seven? Since 2007 there have been 7 of these instances of Quest Pipe Failure with attendant flooding and drywalling and ugh. I have had enough of this and I am done with this fucking shitshow of defective pipe. So done. Completely done.
Today I tore apart all the wall and ceiling needed to access 100% of the Quest pipe in the building. All of the shit pipe at 321 has now been replaced by modern Pex with crimp joints. It's been pressurized and carefully checked over for leaks. There are no leaks. I can plumb things. I am not (generally) an idiot. Also it's pex, which is hard to fuck up.
I still have to patch the drywall, though. It was fairly damp today, so I figured it could have another day to dry out some before I tried to patch to it and so forth. That's going to be tomorrow and probably Wednesday (just pasting and waiting for it to dry while I go do other things) and then I can prime and paint on Thursday.
While this is a gigantic pain in my ass, it will be a gift that keeps on giving.
