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PEX, abraided knuckles, and a well-deserved bath
Friday, February 13 2026
This morning after I had done my usual morning routine, I thought I'd try running half-inch PEX from a 300 foot coil on the first leg of its journey from the PEX fitting near the top of the east wall of the entranceway closet. I pushed the PEX in from the top and it resisted a little as its desire to stay curve conflicted with the straightness of the inter-stud void. Ultimately, though, it made its way to the hole I'd made near the bottom of the wall. I realized though that the way I was feeding it caused the PEX to want to curve back west at the bottom of the wall, but I needed it to curve east after passing though a hole into an inter-joist void in the floor (which is the basement's ceiling). I tried pulling the PEX out and having it curve the other way, but that was impossible. This meant there would be no way to have the PEX push on its own towards a hole further east in the basement ceiling where I could grab it. While pondering what to do, I turned my attention back to my I2C bootloader project. I wanted to confirm that, after all the recent changes to get it working with other microcontrollers, it still worked with the classic Atmega328p. So I tried it out using an ancient Arduino NG board and a DIP Atmega328p, and it worked great. Indeed, it even worked when I used a firmware prepared for an Atmega168 (which I'd never managed to get working on an actual Atmega168).
I returned to the replumbing project later this afternoon. Using two spools of fish tape, I managed to get fish tape up through the hole where the PEX had to enter the basement ceiling from above allowing me to pull the PEX down and over to the the nearest access hole (one of six) in ceiling of the basement hallway. From there, I then had to pull it about thirty feet northward to the boiler room through many joists. I had to drill holes through some, though others had existing holes. The trickiest part of this phase has getting the PEX across pairs of joists whose inter-joist voids were inaccessible except by holes in the joists. This meant that I would have to blindly poke fish tape from one such hole over to the other joist, poking repeatedly and stochastically until I found the hole. Then I could attach the fish tape to the PEX and pull it through. I've had to do this many times already using those same ceiling holes when running electrical wire and, in one case, copper pipe for a new hydronic loop. Due to all the corners the PEX had to get around, I kept having to go back and help it along its journey. Interestingly, it's a material that is highly resistant to kinking even when I tugged on it powerfully.
This went on for a couple hours, and once I had the PEX just outside the boiler room, it was 4:00pm and I decided to take the dogs for a walk. Both came, and all we did was walk up the Farm Road and back.
Getting the PEX to where I needed it in the boiler room was a tricky operation because I was reluctant to cut any more holes in the ceiling. With great effort (and badly abraded knuckles) I managed to get the PEX over to the side of existing copper pipe penetration through the boiler room ceiling. There I drilled a hole from below (accidentally knicking another copper pipe I hadn't seen in the process, though nothing bad happened!) and managed to manipulate the PEX from a distance using a fibreglass stick until its end was directly over the hole. At that point I could snag it with an improvised wire hook to hold it firmly before grabbing it with a very long-jawed pair of needle-nosed pliers. At that point I could pull it down into the boiler room within inches of that manifold I'd installed earlier in the week. At that point I took a break for dinner, eating some leftover Indian food from about two weeks ago.
After dinner, I returned to the replumbing project, pulling the PEX the last couple inches and then putting enough slack in the system so I could easily cut off as much of a foot and still be able to reach the PEX fittings it was supposed to span. The actual attachment to PEX fittings on either end went quickly, and when I pressurized it, there were no leaks.
I immediately ran a test to see how quickly hot water arrived at the upstairs bathtub. I didn't have the old time to compare it to, but the hot water arrived significantly faster.
Later both Gretchen and I took advantage of this new system, with her taking a shower and then me taking one of the most-deserved baths ever.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?260213 feedback
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