Digging in the Basement, Continued
Liz and I spent the afternoon continuing the work we started, last weekend, when we used a demo hammer to break up the concrete.
Our plan is to fill the area back in once we’re done working with the pipes, so we’re keeping all the dirt/sand nearby in a pile. Seems a little odd, but no sense in hauling this all outside when we’d have to haul it all back in again.
I kind of wish we had done the same, with the earlier pile of sand. But there simply wasn’t (and isn’t) enough room in the basement to store everything down here.
More of the waste pipe, exposed. Liz and I were both surprised to find some additional branches feeding into the line. We were both trying to figure out what else was coming in to this guy.
Then and now: looking at what we did previously, compared to what we had uncovered today.
Closeup of the branches. Liz went outside, and identified a few spouts that came down from the gutters, and fed right into this main line from the outside of the house.
Bob knew about these lines, and was of that mind that we needed to seal them up with concrete. I think that having the rain/gutters tied directly into the main waste line like this is wrong, and against code. So we’ll likely have to fix that by sealing them off.
A large pile of dirt from a large hole. It looks less impressive in this photo, but it felt much bigger when we were making this.
The basement is becoming very full again, but we’re moving towards getting the pipes fixed/replaced, and are closer to being able to clean the whole basement, top to bottom. Looking forward to it.
Related:
Basement Demo, Jackhammer Edition
Digging a Very Large Hole in the Basement
I don’t think having the gutters tied into the sanitary is illegal in Chicago, but it is often the cause of basement back ups, or basement flooding, because the system gets overwhelmed with rain water. You can get either cheap or free rain barrels from MWRD.
Andrea (July 6, 2014 at 12:10 pm)We ended up re-routing the gutters, so that they’re not dumping directly into the main waste line. You’re definitely right – it causes strain on the system if everyone’s gutters were to be dumping straight into the city’s sewer system. So for our part, we’ve uncoupled our down spouts.
Good suggestion about the rain barrels! Forgot about those guys. We do need to figure out what we’re going to be doing with the rainwater now (where to divert it, etc). We’ve been so focused on the inside, we’ve not thought much about the outside yet.
avoision (July 9, 2014 at 6:56 am)