Trench Warfare

The fun just never stops. Replacing the tangled spaghetti of old sewer pipes meant first digging out all of the old ones. Emphasis on digging. Here's a glamour shot of the 4-foot-deep trench I dug through the backyard to reveal the main pipe that makes a big 270-degree turn around the house, collecting up most (but not all) of the eight separate waste pipes that exit the house.

Fortunately, sandy soil is pretty easy to dig out. Easier than the adobe clay you get farther inland, for example. They used to make bricks out of that stuff. On the other hand, sand doesn't like to stay put, so your nice neat trench tends to collapse on itself. And our yard is small, so before long I ran out of places to toss the soil. Once it got over my head I knew I was done.

Digging the trench through the backyard was only half the problem. Sure, it exposes the sewer pipes outside the house, but what about the ones inside? The plumbers still had to work underneath the house, and -- of course -- the crawlspace under that area is too small for even the smallest guy on the crew. Solution? Lift up the floor.

Unearthing this little gem shows how the plumbing was put together. Some predecessor put together this three-way manifold that connects an old clay pipe (left), an iron pipe (middle), and an ABS pipe (right), with a cleanout for good measure. The modern ABS pipe is only ABS for a few feet, though. As the next picture shows, it degenerates into cast iron and then splits about four ways. Every branch is a different diameter and the ABS gives way to iron and then back to ABS. It's no better once it disappears under the house, as we were to discover.