New Pipes in the Basement

July 11, 2014

Liz met up with Bob after work, and I joined a little bit later. On arriving, I walked in to see some of the work that our plumber had done.

I had removed the toilet from the bottom bathroom, but found it sitting in our kitchen. Surprisingly, this is not the first time I’ve seen a random toilet in the wrong room.

Upstairs, I found Liz and Bob in conversation. This is what Liz had been up to, prior to me arriving.

This demo is happening so that we can get to the remaining cast iron pipe – and basically remove it all. Liz spotted a section of the cast iron vent that had deteriorated significantly, and that seems to have been the source of the mysterious and heretofore unidentified leak we found, way back in January.

Which, honestly, seems like a lifetime ago.

Down in the basement, I got to see what our plumber had been up to. He’s successfully replaced our lead pipe, and things are markedly less dangerous/unstable. We were originally going to have to freeze the pipe to work on it, but he was able to do it without the freezing (and ended up saving us a few hundred dollars, as a result).

A view of the new pipes. On the far left is the main waste (that still needs to get tied in to the upstairs bathroom). Further ahead is the pipe we had stubbed in, for when we put in a smaller bathroom down here (moving towards the fan, the pipes sticking up are: shower, sink, toilet).

A view from the side. The plumber got a good deal of sand back in (he moved the large pile we had by the back door already). But what’s left is for us to wet everything down and tamp it, and continue to return all the sand we took out back in. Tamping as we go, every few inches.