With the North hallway stack gutted, we now know exactly what we have to work with dimensionally and otherwise. I'm going to use this post to highlight a bit of what we've found and to show some of the details that go into making the project an exceptional upgrade to our chapter's home.
Windows
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| 5th Floor Window - Interior |
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| 5th Floor Window - Exterior |
Since we are working window openings back into the bathrooms, part of the demo removed the infilled bricks that were used to close up the openings in the '76 renovation. The method of mounting the bathroom fans was to put them through at the top of the arch by removing part of the arch. Now having removed the infilled bricks and exhaust vent, we are missing those arch bricks. Replacing bricks isn't easy. The brick yards that produced these bricks over 100 years ago aren't in operation anymore (quite possibly the brick yards once located near Alewife) and matching them with new bricks can be difficult. Take a close look at the infilled bricks on the right from '76 and it becomes obvious that they look nothing alike. Fortunately there were some extra bricks inside the window openings that were uncovered during the demo. The contractor is going to try to recover those and re-use them. What to do about the vent for the fan? We're going to take them vertical and vent out of the roof. That's a straight forward roof penetration and won't require any difficult coring operations through ~12" of brick exterior wall.
Heating
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| Fin Tube Baseboard at 5th North |
Another issue is how to heat the bathrooms. The baseboard units that were installed to replace the cast iron radiators throughout the house have been one of the systems that has not held up well over time. Bathroom units were susceptible to rust and units everywhere tend to simply come apart. Our aim was to replace them with higher quality and better looking modern radiators (
Runtal RF Wall Mount Radiator). However the way that the baseboard piping was run presented a problem. Although these should be 3/4" piping through the entire loop, they actually alternate between 1/2" and 3/4" throughout the runs. Presumably the plumber running these was looking to save a little money by cutting a few corners. Our contractor was concerned that this situation would not play well with the valve setup needed to tap a radiator off in parallel to the heating loop. We're planning to work around that issue by bringing up a heating run for each stack of the bathrooms from the basement that will be independent of the 4 heating loops on each floor. This should be more reliable and will aid in adjusting the heating output in the bathrooms independently of the other rooms. This may be handy since the bathrooms will get actual insulation unlike most of the building.
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| Old Baseboard - 5th North |
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| Runtal RF Radiator |
Here's a comparison of the old and what we have planned. The new one should look pretty sharp and hold up better.
Framing Changes
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| Historic Framing - Now Reframed |
When plumbers started operating in buildings in the late 19th and early 20th century, it seems that they were subject neither to building codes nor gravity. The kind of notching that you see in the old joist is typical of what you find in a toilet installation from that era. A framer would put in a nice set of joists and then the plumber would come through. Sometimes the notching would continue all of the way across the bathroom to accommodate drains. We don't operate that way anymore - the building code specifies the size of notches and holes that can be cut. As we go the floors are getting reframed and leveled. The 5th north was pitched pretty badly towards the north patio - not anymore!
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| Comparison of North bath layout before with current framing plans. |
As I've mentioned previously, the extra framing on the toilet side of the bathroom that allowed for extra plumbing space took up perhaps 8" of width in a modestly sized space. Removing all of those layers has given us a chance to pack the plumbing more efficiently. As a result we'll be able to fit in storage shelves beside the tub as well as a chase to vent the baths vertically.
Curiosities
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| Gas Pipe in 5th North |
Often you find relics of the past hidden in the walls. This gas pipe was abandoned long ago, but may well have been part of an early gas lighting system. Imagine the number of CO detectors that we'd need if we still lighted that way today!
There is also the case of this galvanized flu that is run along with the drain stack. It's not part of the plumbing - those vents were all cast iron (and rusted to the point of ineffectiveness). The source of the combustion that it vented is no longer obvious; this space appears to have been used as a bathroom since the building was built according to the original drawings.
