Stinkin Sewer Pipe

And we are back, It has been a week or since we have laid the lowdown of what’s going on with the house.  The big project finally got underway. For those of you not in the “know” the big project was replacing sewer line and making a sump-hole. We have a bathroom upstairs, but we were lacking in the basement one, having a toilet in one far room and a stand-up single stall shower in another. Wasn’t a really functional bathroom at all, also considering there were no doors on anything in the basement so you could kiss privacy goodbye.

Now to start this project, you at least want to have a rough Idea of what you want. We knew what we were after, which was to remove the toilet, have a pipe straight into the sewer line for the laundry sink and wash machine, and locate spots for a toilet/sink/and shower in the other corner of the house.

We rented a Jack hammer, because it was much less messy than a wet saw to cut through the concrete, ran us about 70 bucks for a 24 hr period. This was for a 60lb 100v jackhammer, plenty for up to 4-5” concrete.  Then we set to work on the basement, we had three rooms to go through each needing the concrete broke up above where we would put the new pipe and to remove to old pipe that was in the way.

Fortunately, we found that the 70 year old concrete was actually only 3” thick which turned to make the job very very easy for taking the concrete out. It was better to make large chunks so it was easier to take out and up the stairs. We were going to lay 3” sewer line in the floor so to make it easy we took at least a 12” wide path out so we had room to dig and to maneuver. Be aware however when using a Jackhammer, the pipe that is below may be cast and brittle so unless you mean to break off the pipe try not to use a jackhammer directly on it.

Once we were able to start digging for pipe we did, but it is crucial to not take more dirt out than you need to, because otherwise you really have to pack the underlying dirt down before you lay your new sewer pipe to avoid settling… the last thing you want is a sewer line that settles….

On the far end of the house, where the sewer line goes under the wall and out toward the street, we first took a 3” line and shoved it as far as we could in so that in the future there would be good new plastic pipe available if we needed to replace any pipe from the house to the street. But as we did this we made sure that we did not shove to far as to hit a elbow where the sewer line dropped down, so going out 3 feet from the wall of the house usually would suffice.

Once we had all of the old concrete and pipe out, we could begin to lay pipe, This should be done with someone whom has done it before, it is a critical task that the pipe slopes just enough but not too much. They make a special level if you feel like finding one, just for you to be able to see the slope per foot on the pipe.

We worked along the basement, one person jack-hammering, one digging, and one laying pipe, and then as one would finish they would go back and help the person following them up; this helped us move along swiftly.  We went along, installing clean-outs (place for a plumber to run a snake in event of a clogged pipe)

After a time of running 2” pipe for the washing machine and laundry sink drains and also for a branch to the upstairs kitchen and the soon to be a shower in the basement we then were able to refill the trench in which we had made for the pipe.  We used the fine fill dirt, for it would fill into the smaller cracks and crevasses much better than chunks of concrete. When the dirt had been filled into the trench, we packed it down as much as possible using our feet and a sledgehammer to pack it down, leaving 3” for the new cement that we were to put in.

The cement was a bit of a challenge that we were mixing 1 bag at a time and each bag did not seem to go very far in filling the remainder of the top of the trench. We also made time to have a low spot for the drain that we set in the laundry rooms and made sure that as we poured the cement, that it was all sloping downhill to what had previously been the lowest point in the basement, trying to maintain that same positioning.

Just a general FYI, Sack-crete varies in types you may buy, the type we got was Quickcrete 5000, and then ran short on and got  quickcrete gravel cement mix. I really preferred the 5000 over the gravel, it seemed to trowel out much better than the gravel based. But once it all dried it was difficult to tell where one type ended and another started.

Once we were done, I was able to spend an entire afternoon scrubbing the stairs and the floor.  This process makes a incredibly large mess of anything in the area of the sewer pipe but to have it done means that we can now move on and finish the rest of out basement without having to wait on the new plumbing to be done.

We did about 40 feet of sewer line it was about 200 dollars in pipe and connectors, 70 for the jackhammer and 3 men for 8 hrs of labor.  Thankfully it was family so they were willing to help and we had to feed them and that was it, but we figured contracted out this would have been close to at least 1000.00 to hire. So this is one instant where the DIY and the mess are well worth it.