Venting Anger

I hate vents. One of the basics you learn in Plumbing 101 is that all drain pipes need a vent pipe. Basically, for the water to run out of your sink (or bathtub, or toilet, etc...) air needs to take its place. Without a way for the air to get in, the water will get "stuck" in the pipe and drain slowly, if at all. It'll also make a gurgling noise, like pouring soda out of a bottle.

Anyway, real plumbers know this and they design houses accordingly. At least, nowadays they do. Back in 1893... not so much.

One of the bathrooms downstairs is not original, and was probably added sometime in the 1930s. When the plumbing was added for the sink and the toilet, there was nowhere to put the mandatory vent pipe, so they stuck it on the outside of the house.

Nothing yells "retrofit" like plumbing on the outside of a building. And because vent pipes have to extend all the way to above the roof line, that meant a three-story flagpole (with a kink in it) broadcasting their poor planning. I hated it.

So let's see... as long as we're rejiggering the plumbing anyway... yeah, that'll work.

The five most expensive words in remodeling are, "as long as we're here..."

Nevertheless, we called Marc the plumber back for one last fix. "As long as you're here, Marc, why don't we eliminate that %&@$# vent line?" So Marc craftily tapped into his brand new handiwork and merged the bathroom vent into the other new work, almost before the cement had even dried. Result: no external vent pipe. Jim is very happy.

The only downside is that Marc got to remove the offending pipe himself. When I wasn't looking, he set up a ladder and dismantled three stories' worth of pipe. He grinned and said that was partial payment for cutting into his brand new lines. He knew how much I hated that old thing.

True to form, part of the pipe was iron (and very heavy) and part was ABS plastic. I'm guessing that the plastic bit was replacement for an iron section that either rusted out or fell over in a storm.

Die, you gravy-sucking pig.

A Three-Holer

Because the crawlspace under the back of the house is too small to work in, we had to lift up sections of flooring back there and work from the top down. We cut away three parts, one in the ladies' restroom and two in the adjoining utility room. Fortunately, we were going to replace the vinyl flooring in both rooms anyway, so this just accelerated the process.

Here's the ladies' room floor with the toilet removed and the floor cut away. Sadly, this meant cutting some of the original redwood subfloor, which I hate to do. It's half-inch tongue-and-groove redwood, perfectly fit and laid on the diagonal for strength. I'm sure it hasn't been disturbed in 120 years. But there was no way to avoid it; it had to come out. Once removed, we could reach down into the crawlspace and work on the plumbing.

On the other side of the wall is this utility room, which used to hold the dishwashers when this was a restaurant. Again, I cut some rectangular holes in the floor and the plumbers reached down and worked from above. Between the three holes, plus the parts they could reach by crawling under the house, they managed to rationalize the whole plumbing scene under there. Progress!

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.

The Inverse Completion Principle

You might think that, with no new blog posts in a long while, we've stopped working on the house.

Um, no. Quite the opposite. We've been busy with all sorts of projects. So busy, in fact, that we haven't had time to post any of the pictures or stories. That should change this week.

Also this week, we've got scaffolding going up (more on that later), a new floor going in (ibid), and all sorts of news to post. So grab your Froot Loops and stay tuned.