Off the wall question....

10 years ago

...and trying to think outside the box....

Last winter, I re-plumbed the furnace piping. As the steel pipe was in contact with the brick and mortar of the foundation wall where it passes into the crawl space, it developed a leak. Only took 70 years.... The system is all good now (Shark-Bite fittings and Dresser couplings are your friends....), but there is a ragged hole where the masonry was degraded by being wetted with hot water for a while.

Not enough room for a full-sized brick anywhere, so I was going to butter up brick pieces with mortar and lay 'em in as best as I could. Even thought about using a stiff mix of concrete, but making a form to retain it on the inside (not a lot of access room behind the furnace) is difficult.

To avoid future problems, I installed a PVC sleeve to keep the copper pipe from resting on masonry. Urethane foam was considered, but discarded for several reasons.

Any other off-the-wall, outside-of-the-box solutions?

Comments (6)

snoonyb
10 years ago
Fire caulk.
apg4
Original Author
10 years ago
Interesting...never heard of it, so I looked it up. (Another great product from 3M.) But I'll need maybe a dozen tubes - or a full pail - and it's pricey stuff.

I'll probably end up using stiff mix of concrete, but mix it with a light-weight aggregate like perlite to lessen the slump.
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apg4
Original Author
10 years ago
Interesting...never heard of it, so I looked it up. (Another great product from 3M.) But I'll need maybe a dozen tubes - or a full pail - and it's pricey stuff.

I'll probably end up using stiff mix of concrete, but mix it with a light-weight aggregate like perlite to lessen the slump.
live_wire_oak
10 years ago
If you used SharkBites, better leave the hole. You'll need it to repair that when those fittings fail and it has to be redone.
apg4
Original Author
10 years ago
Way ahead of ya'.... There's a short length of PVC already in place, and *that* will be cemented in place. The 1.5" copper merely passes through.

Seems that the use of perlite to make lightweight, thermal-resistant concrete is pretty much SOP. I'm trying to get a quick-set, low-slump mix, 'cause I can only work from one side - the crawl space side.

Don't know if y'all have the same problem: the access hatch to the crawl space is shrinking more with each passing year.... ;-)

Cheers

Oh, and apologies for the double post above. (I didn't even think that was possible on this site.) But then I've been having problems with my ISP who won't be named. (Verizon....) There one minute, gone the next. Some recent e-mails have taken hours to be delivered.
apg4
Original Author
10 years ago
...and the winner is....

Lightweight concrete. Bought a 10# pail of Quikcrete's rapid-set cement, and after mixing, added about a half to 2/3 of the volume in aggregate: perlite. This makes for a stiff but light and workable mix. It's best to work with two 'lifts' as it sets up right quick, in 10 to 20 minutes, and you couldn't mix the whole bunch in one go with that much admix.

I was going to do a compression test if I had any leftover product...but there was just enough....

It turned out looking pretty good, even if it is hidden down behind the furnace....