Drain Teaser

Pop quiz: How many pipes do you see in this picture?

Click on the photo to enlarge it, and see if you can count all the drain pipes. Go ahead... we'll wait...

The correct answer is: eight. Yup, we have 8 different sewer pipes leading out from under the house. And that's not even counting the ninth one you can't see in this photo.

Don't believe me? Check out the image below to find the ones you missed. The bad news is, most of those pipes are made of cast iron, and iron rusts. Pipe #8 is even older. It's clay.

This all became suddenly relevant on Thursday when I moved away the last pieces of concrete and started smelling... no, not that. It smelled like dishwasher soap. Turns out I'd started the dishwasher about 15 minutes before heading outside. Now the dirt's all wet and smells like soap. Uh-oh.

I thought this old plumbing had been abandoned long ago. Nope. About half of these eight sewer pipes are still in service, even though a few of them are almost 100 years old. The packed dirt had been holding them together, and once I removed that, they crumbled apart. Good thing sewer pipes aren't under any pressure or they would have blown apart long ago. Instead, they just kind of quietly leaked into the ground, unbeknownst to any of us.

Call the plumber. He goes nuts trying to figure out which pipes lead to where -- and why. Then he whips out a cool pipe-inspection video camera called a See Snake. You send the camera down the pipe and watch it on a little color LCD TV screen. It sounds disgusting (these are sewer pipes, after all), but it's really kind of cool. Sort of like a mole's eye view of the world.

The more the camera explored, the more pipes we found. It seemed like every few feet the pipe would branch off in yet another new direction. Some of the pipe was new ABS, some was iron, some was clay, and some was just plain gone, held together with rust and packed dirt.

While scoping out one section, the plumber says, "I can see that this is where your washer drains." How do you know? "Well, we can tell if a sewer pipe is used for a bathroom or not, and there's no, um, 'evidence' of a bathroom on this line." Oh, I get it. Sorry I asked. It's also about this time that I notice the plumber is wearing black rubber gloves, and never touches the camera directly.

After an hour or so of exploration, we effectively map out the proverbial plumber's nightmare you see above. Our best guess is that the house started with very minimal indoor plumbing, circa 1893, then gradually added fixtures in the 1930s and 1960s. Apparently it was easier to run new waste pipes instead of tapping into the existing ones, so now we've got a hodgepodge collection of vintage plumbing from different eras. All eight eventually feed into one ABS pipe that makes a 270-degree bend and goes out to the city sewer line -- and even that is new. Remember, this house had no direct sewer connection at all until we bought it. It just drained into the neighbor's house.

Now the single pipe leads all the way around the back yard and out to the side street. It's the long way around, but you know the old saying about flowing downhill.