New floor is in

This weekend we put the new laminated floor in. It's the Berry Floor Residence Elysee Oak. It looks gorgeous. The hard part was putting it under the stairs, but we did it.

Nice!

Replaced watermain!

I'm tired, have a back pain.... but we did it. The lead watermain is replaced by a Polyethylene (PE-40) tube. Replacing the lead tube wasn't easy because there wasn't a clear path from front to back. I had to open up the floor in three places. We used a spring line and the lead tube itself to pull the PE tube through. I'm glad my brother in law was there to help me, I couldn't have done it without him.

A high density version of PE (HDPE) is also used for the watermain here in the street. It's inert to most chemicals, acids etc.

Below is a picture of the tube we used. I'll post some pictures of the couplings in a few days.

Ruptured water main

Yesterday we returned from De Eemhof where we had a vacation for a week. We had such a great week. There was a tropical swim paradise including a wild river, Anna loved that and wanted to go again and again and again :)

But... last night when I went to bed and turned everything off I heard a whoosh sound. It was hard to locate at first. But after I got down on the floor and put my ear against the ground Indian style I heard it was coming from beneath the floor. The only thing I knew it could be was the water main. After shutting of the water the noise stopped.

This morning we phoned the insurance company which then contacted a plumber. Before the plumber arrived I had to open up the floor cause that was the only way to get to the leak. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to take the laminaat out without damaging it because it was the glue type instead of the click type. After opening the floor we soon found the leak, but we also discovered that the water main was made of lead. Because it's an old house they still used lead back then (pre 1960). It would be best to completely replace it with either a copper or plastic main because it's possible it'll leak again.

In the afternoon the plumber came and had to cut the leaky piece out and replace it with a copper tube. This involved some advanced soldering, you can see the result below. Other pictures can, as usual, be found at fotos.vzuijlekom.com (stuff->waterlekkage)