Totally Tubular I

Viega Manabloc

This weekend I'm focusing on putting in the new Viega Manabloc water distribution manifold. Over the next week, I should be removing old galvanized trunk plumbing and installing home run PEX plumbing. The first part is getting the manifold mounted. 



In modern houses, these are usually mounted between a couple of studs in a utility room. Since my house is 120+ years old, I don't have that. Instead, I'm building a box for it that will be mounted on the wall in the cellar. It's a pretty simple box. Leftover subfloor for a back-plate and re-used 2x4s for the frame, which I made as wide as a stud. I may add a plexiglass door to the front to show it off and keep it safe, but it needs to be fixed first.

Water Distribution Manifold in the frame

I was hoping to have the box built and mounted by the end of the night, but after my fastest three-mile run this year, I was feeling pretty lazy. It started getting late and then my drill battery ran down, so I didn't finish tonight. I was in the middle of putting a 3/4" hole in front of each of the 1/2" ports. The idea is to keep the PEX from bending too quickly after coming out of the ports by putting them through the holes in the studs. 

Boring holes on the "studs" on the side of the frame

At this point, you might be wondering why I bought such a large manifold, or you may not since you don't know how many ports I'll be using. It's a thirty port manifold and I think I'll be using fourteen of the ports. The problem is that my possible plans for the finished version of the house has more connections in the kitchen, an additional half bathroom and a laundry room that will have a washer and perhaps a laundry sink. For now, the extra ports will be unused. Eventually, almost all of the cold water ports will be used and most of the hot water ports will be used.

Hopefully I'll be able to get up early in the morning and finish the box, then mount it and start preparing to run PEX tubing. This will mean laying down lots of plastic to keep from getting the tubes too dirty, then surveying the current stub-outs to see what needs to be replaced and what can be used as-is. If its galvanized pipe, I'l probably try to replace it. If it's copper, I'll probably leave it since it will make things easier now and a lot of the fixtures will be moving around at some point in the next couple of years.