a black black day....

Went down to the basement to get a roast out of the freezer and was greeted by a few inches of very murky water with food bits floating it in and I can't even talk about the smell. It seems that the basment sink has been spewing out the back up from our kitchen sink and dishwasher for well over a week. We are a family of 8 so you can only imagine the mess.

So I invited my husband down the to the basment to share the joy and we emptied everything out and shopvac'd out the filth and the bleached everything and re shopvac'd. Then we were able to look for the stopage. We opened the trap on the sink to access into the pipe ( note.. 100 year old house).. we could only get a snake about 6 feet and made no progess so called an emergency plumber ( regular plumber does not do weekends).. he comes and snakes for all he is worth and comes back up with red earth

He says that the line UNDER our basement floor has collapsed and that we are going to either have to jack hammer up the floor and put in new pipe or run the kitchen waste water out another way ( across basement to other cast iron hub that handles waste for other part of the house.


In the mean time we have rigged shall I say a *creative* way to use the kitchen but this will need to be fixed in the next 2-3 days.


ok.. my question (bet you wondered hu?).. all things being equal are we better off to jack hammer up the floor and replace pipe that has been there since 1950 ( when that part of the basment was dug out and a bathroom was added) or should we run the kitchen waste water out through pipe that they are suggesting be run along at basement ceiling heigth and then put in a saniflow system for the basement bathroom???

All suggestions welcome

Maddimome

With my limited experience of jackhammering through concrete to replace bad piping, I recommend running new pipe. It will probably be cheaper as well, because you always seem to have to dig further and further down and across to get at the bad section. You'd be not so pleasantly surprised at how many man (or woman) hours that takes.

jack hammering up the floor

are you telling me that you have a bathroom in the

basement that is still working ok or is that pipe also collapsed

in the concrete floor too????


need more informatioin....

maddiemom6 said:

All suggestions welcome

Maddimome

Click to expand...

In situations like these, sometimes you can abandon a dedicated drain serving a fixture and run the drain line above ground either along the bottom of the joists with proper fall or towards the lower half of the wall to another stack already located in the basement.

In question to the drain cleaning........did the person try to use a blow-up sack or other method of getting that drain open other than cabling?

master plumber mark said:

are you telling me that you have a bathroom in the

basement that is still working ok or is that pipe also collapsed

in the concrete floor too????


need more informatioin....

Click to expand...

Hi Mark,

I am sorry that I was not more clear.. the kitchen pipe runs down from the first story to the basement and enters a tangle of pipes behind the basement bathroom wall ( which just happens to be ripped open to I can see the whole mess of pipes back there).. it drops in the wall into the drain pipe for the basement bathroom sink. In the bathroom there are three fixtures with the sink the middle the shower to the right and the toilet to the left. The pipe under the floor seems to run to the left after draining into the sink. The shower is of the raised variety and the drain for it hooks into the sink drain pipe behinde the wall. ( the shower is also backed up).. The toilet which is to the far left of all this mess does flush.. I flushed it multiple times with no over flow or back up.. so my conclusion is that the "collapse" or blockage is just left of the sink and not in line after the toilet since the toilet works.

So.. in the bathroom the shower does not work, the sink does not work and what ever is bock these is the reason for the dishwasher and the kitchen sink to be back up into the basment sink and shower. The basement toilet from all signs does work.

Is that the information you needed?

Maddiemom

RUGGED said:

In situations like these, sometimes you can abandon a dedicated drain serving a fixture and run the drain line above ground either along the bottom of the joists with proper fall or towards the lower half of the wall to another stack already located in the basement.

In question to the drain cleaning........did the person try to use a blow-up sack or other method of getting that drain open other than cabling?

Click to expand...

Rugged, Thanks for your thoughts.. I understand what you are saying but that seems to mean that I would have to give up a basment bathroom. We had really hoped to fix up the basement and throw one of the teens down there ( 5 kids still at home).. I have looked at installing a saniflow system.. but this worries me.


As for the drain cleaning.. the only thing he used was the power snake... what would be the other choices? I am open to other suggestions

Thanks!
Maddiemom

maddiemom6 said:

As for the drain cleaning.. the only thing he used was the power snake... what would be the other choices? I am open to other suggestions

Thanks!
Maddiemom

Click to expand...

I always use a blow up sack/canvas blowup bag as a last ditched effort to get the line open. It uses water/hydropressure to force whatever obstruction is in the way.

Of course if there is a local vent close by this would eliminate it's use. If you have waste coming up a floor drain then I would use that bag in the drain. If it comes up in the toilet then the bag is useless. Those bags are not designed for toilets.

Some jobs are dig jobs no matter what but I've gotten drains open enough for people to not make a hurried decision regarding the issues. Being that it is a smaller diameter line....it may have to be replaced.

RUGGED said:

I always use a blow up sack/canvas blowup bag as a last ditched effort to get the line open. It uses water/hydropressure to force whatever obstruction is in the way.

Of course if there is a local vent close by this would eliminate it's use. If you have waste coming up a floor drain then I would use that bag in the drain. If it comes up in the toilet then the bag is useless. Those bags are not designed for toilets.

Some jobs are dig jobs no matter what but I've gotten drains open enough for people to not make a hurried decision regarding the issues. Being that it is a smaller diameter line....it may have to be replaced.

Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to get back to me.. the over flow came up via the bathrom sink.. to the exent that it filled up.. over flowed and kept going. I pulled up the toilet today to see if that would give me any insight to this mess since the sink is all but on top of the john in this tiny little bathroom.. When I put a mirror down there I can see a connection about 1-2 inches past the bend and i can see red earth in that connection. The whole mess under there is cast iron and the section I can best see is very rusted..but as i said the toilet still flows and I tested it again today with more than enough water to have backed it up. So for now I have run the sink drain so it will empty into the the hub connection in the floor that served the toilet. Good lord knows that it's not kosher but it will let use the kitchen sink for the next few days while we get some other plumbers out here to figure out what it wrong with this whole mess and our options in fixing it.

Maddie

Gravity is Better than Electricity

If you have something in the basement that needs to drain, AND you have enough elevation to drain it by gravity, then you are better off fixing the drain instead of putting in a pumped system of any kind.

You will have maintenance on the pumped system, and a good gravity drain should last 50 years with little or no maintenance.

I agree with Bob -- there are some bullets that have to be bitten. I have regretted "rigged" repairs and bypasses many times, and always felt better when the job was done right, in spite of the higher (usually) cost. YOu get what you pay for.

You also should go down into your basement more often .