Saturday we had a bit of a whoops. We had been working on sistering floor joists as part of the wet wall reframe, and hit a stopping point due to an ordered part not being in yet. It was getting into the evening and we had dinner plans at seven. I figured one quick last thing before we wrapped up would be to install a plug in the smaller drain, where the first floor kitchen sink had originally been.
Drain with tee and elbow
It was as simple as unscrewing the existing galvanized line from the cast elbow and putting in the plug. I braced the pipe while Mike unscrewed with the pipe wrench. We first started turning it at the tee, but the pipe wouldn’t clear the floor, so we decided to loosen it at the elbow first. That’s when the tee abruptly cracked.
Broken tee
Crap. The cast iron was completely rotted, most likely due to people putting the wrong stuff down the kitchen sink for too many years. Now we had a dilemma. We needed to fix it quickly, and I didn’t have a coupling for the PVC pipe that the cast iron transitioned to directly below the tee. I did, however, have a brand new, 10′ length of PVC left over from the water heater venting. We measured and realized that not only would it fit, we could also resolve a long standing issue in the basement. The 2″ PVC drain went directly into a 3″ PVC drain in the floor that was cracked. It also had several capped branches on it, all of which could be eliminated.
Basement connection
Check out that beauty! They had put on a side drain for the tub, another side port that required water to travel up for the basement kitchen sink, and the gap where the smaller pipe went into the bigger one was filled with Great Stuff foam that bubbled out every time we ran the dishwasher. Mike ran to the hardware store to buy a reducing coupling and I cut off both the cast iron tee and the top of the 3″ PVC pipe, pulling out all of the existing PVC.
Much better!
Mike got back and we installed the reducing couple and fitted in the new 10′ PVC pipe. With a few inches cut off at the top, we reused the rubber couple to join it back to the cast iron going up to the upstairs kitchen sink.
Rubber couple
Despite my warnings not to use the sink, Sarah managed to run the kitchen faucet while I was standing under the open pipe and then later poured out part of a 2-liter of pop (fortunately I wasn’t under it the second time). She apologized for forgetting and said she was just hungry. We did make it to dinner, albeit a little late; the sushi was really good!
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