I suppose it makes sense to close out Rain Rain No Go Away, and cover some additional plumbing issues. Then this weekend, I'll spend some time catching up with new developments.
Last we wrote, our drain-pipe was terribly stopped up. We had a plumber come (more to say about that later), and he suggested that since the four-inch PVC was packed in concrete, probably the pipe was fine. He told us to call RotoRooter to snake it out, because he didn't get involved with that sort of job.
So we did. RotoRooter-man spent longer than an hour working on the drain.
He inserted a full 50 feet of metal into the drain and finally... it's cleared!
He ran the hose full-blast into the pipe for quite a long time, and it didn't get backed up. This was a positive plumbing development! We bugged him to come into the house to look at some of our other plumbing issues, and he found this...
The master bedroom closet is adjacent to the upstairs bathroom. The closet has a couple small doors in it to allow access to the bathtub plumbing. The pic above shows the plumbing, but do you see that mug in there?! Hahahahaha! A wonderful solution for leaky pipes!
But unfortunately, that's not our biggest plumbing problem. Check our basement out. Imagine the Jaws theme now...
We are formulating a plan to rectify this mess which will probably involve re-doing the half-bath on the ground floor. One would think that these thick black pipes would last forever, but apparently PVC is much preferred.
The moonlighting plumber we brought in (a facilities guy at Brown in the daytime) explained that PVC is self-cleaning. Whereas these big steel pipes have water running always along their bottoms, PVC piping tends to have water that swirls. Maybe it's coated inside?
Anyway... time to hit that hay. Work is going well so far. Was thrilled to get the power on on Monday. Locksmith coming tomorrow. Water heater replacement Saturday.
3 comments:
Don't forget the mesh!
Those cast-iron pipes rust inside and crack lengthwise--I had to replace segments in my Balto house till I had pretty much replaced it all. Glad the drainpipe works! xo
Indeed... mesh! Fifty cents worth of precaution will hopefully preclude future RotoLooting (spelling intentional), like that which was perpetrated on us on Wednesday. Then again, he definitely did a solid job of snaking that puppy out.
And concurrently, we'll not be afraid to keep those gutters empty.
About the cast-iron... the lengthwise cracks are exactly what our plumber, Gary, warned about. We don't want anything to do with lengthwise piping cracks. Yikes!
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