Once the magic smoke comes out, things don't work any more.
John Kasunich
jmkasunich@fastmail.fm
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Tue, 04 Sep 2007
Back in July I discovered that I had a broken clay sewer pipe in a bad spot - under the front porch. Today the plumbers started on the replacement job. Unfortunately the backhoe is tied up on another job and won't arrive until tomorrow, but the basement digging is under way.
Many times while working on this house I've stopped and said "What were they thinking?" Today was one of those days. A prior owner installed a basement bathroom. I decommissioned it not long after we moved in, there is a bathroom at the top of the steps, and basement space is a precious commodity. But the plumbing is still under the floor. During today's digging, we found that when they installed the bathroom, they said "we don't need no steenking fittings". They simply busted a hole in the existing clay drain, laid the new toilet drain next to the hole, the new shower/sink above the hole, and covered the whole mess with a massive lump of hydraulic cement.
The problem that we set out to fix is actually a few feet outside the basement wall, but we're going to replace the pipe all the way back to a point just upstream of the "no fittings" mess. Also planning to install a dedicated drain right next to the wall for the furnace and air conditioner condensate, instead of piping it to the former shower drain.
(posted: 04 Sep 2007 13:26) (permalink)