I’m excited to move forward and move to the basement floor issues but there is one thing that needs to be addressed first.  Over by the main waste stack is a cast iron pipe that comes out but it is half above and half below the cement floor.  This was where the shower stall that we demoed was and there was a shower trap now exposed.  The worst part was that the cement floor didn’t go up to the pipe and the drain trap wasn’t even connected to the cast iron anymore.  This means there’s a leak for sewer gases.  This was an old stall for washing after shoveling coal or something back then.  I don’t know, it sounds good to me so it must be fact :).  Another funky thing is how croaked the main waste stack is at this joint.  That just doesn’t look right.

Seeing what I had to take on I caved and purchased the Bosch Bull Dog Hammer Drill.  I not only needed it now but I’ve had friends say how that tool saved their butts on some jobs and it’s always good to have.  I bought a chisel bit and started to break the concrete floor conservatively around the weird pipe to hopefully cut it off and figure out the next step after a good visual.

Foundation eroded

This is where it gets interesting.  As I hammered around that exposed pipe I noticed the concrete around themain waste stack sounding hollow.  I broke some away and noticed the dirt had sunken a good 2–3 inches below the cement.  I kept drilling until the concrete was tight with the dirt as it should.  All said and done I now have a 9′ x 4′ hole in my basement.  The culprit? We found a golf ball sized hole in the main waste stack just below the concrete floor at the elbow and it allowed waste water to leak out and slowly erode the dirt.  This explained why some of the basement had sunk/eroded.

Solution mode

We needed to replace that pipe so I started digging all the dirt away and going below the pipes so they could be cut.  Once I had this done I ran over my plan with the wifey and she brought up the idea of putting in a half bath since we had the plumbing exposed already.  Damnit, she’s right.  It’s a one bathroom house and it makes sense.

To get started I got permits approved for emergency plumbing repair, half bathroom and I also pulled one for water supply line upgrade that I would be doing much later.The weekend was set to knock this one out.  Ideally I would have rented one of those chain cast iron cutters but being the weekend that would have cost me 3 days when I only needed it for 1 hour.  My back–up plan was to use my reciprocating saw with a thick metal blade and that worked really well once I realized I needed a new blade.

I cut at the top of the stack and then at the line to the city.  Once we had the old pipe out we made another run to Home depot.  We must have spent 2 hours in the plumbing isle laying out pipe and running through plans.  Our original plan got scrapped because we were now adding a half bath.  This meant we needed to fit in a “Y” fitting on an already short run and still maintain a 1/4 inch pitch without breaking the concrete surface too soon.

Plumbing materials:

• 10′ of 4′′ Schedule 40 PVC pipe
• 2 x 45 degreePVC bend couplings
• 4′′ Wye PVC coupling
• 4′′ Clean–Out coupling
• 1 Falco Rubber coupling for Cast Iron to PVC
• 1 Falco Rubber Coupling with Stainless Steel cover Sheetfor Cast Iron to PVC
• PVC Glue and Primer

Materials:

It felt good to get that fixed along with losing the fear of working under the waste pipe and someone releasing a “Devil Spawn” on my head.

Now that we have a functioning waste line again I started on the bathroom plumbing.  I find it important to note here that it took us a long time to decide the layout and dimensions of the bathroom.  Not because we couldn’t agree but because of all the obstacles like the wall would run through the middle of the window or it was too far of a run for proper pitch.  In the end it will be small but appropriate.  I also must say how awesome my inspector was.  He was really helpful when I ran my plans by him.  He not only pointed out errors in my drawing but also stated solutions and better ways to do it.  The main mistake I had was venting.  I wanted to go back over the bathroom and tap right back into the main waste for venting.  He pointed out running to the dedicated vent that went above the highest fixture in the house.  Just a bit more pipe cutting and some simple runs got it done.

It felt so good to get that approved and fill the hole back in.  You may notice that the toilet pipe is really long and the vanity and washer vertical pipes don’t have “T” connections.  The toilet was left long because I don’t know where the finished floor with end up.  It’s better to leave it long now and then cut it flush when the floor is done (the flange is not glued on in the pick).  As for the other figure pipes, similar story.  We are positive on the vanity height or the washer run and it’s easy to tap in the “T” when I’m ready.

Now back to the basement floor next???????