Since we bought the house, we’ve had a leak in the roof where the cast iron soil stack sticks out. This is due to a complete lack of any kind of flashing on the roof. The hole itself is at least two inches larger in diameter than the pipe itself and you can see the sky from inside the attic. To be honest, I should have fixed this a long time ago. Rain water runs down the pitch of the roof, into the hole, then runs down the pipe all the way into the basement. Along the way it makes a mess of the wet wall (it’s not supposed to be literally wet). In a hard rain we’d get a puddle in the basement mechanical room, because of course the floor doesn’t slope to the drain (grumble). At one point I tried to patch it with Great Stuff, but other than making a big mess that didn’t accomplish much.
Part of what had stopped me from fixing this sooner was my intention to run the new soil stack out of PVC, including all of the correctly-positioned fittings for all of the connections (drains for toilets, sinks, tubs, shower, and various venting). Mapping all of that before we have the second floor re-framed is tricky. Regardless, I spent a fair amount of time working that out and planning things, but ran into some complications. Among these were the current location of the washer and dryer, the need to run a drain line for the future location of the washer as well as the kitchen sink.
When the day came to tackle this project, Rob and Aaron showed up and lent a hand. There is a 2″ vent pipe and the 4″ soil stack running up in parallel until the 2″ vent connects near the top. The 2″ vent pipe came off pretty easily, but the joints in the cast iron proved to be really solid, and I wound up cutting the pipe into sections with an angle grinder. The larger section of cast iron is about ten feet long and with all the fittings probably weighs a couple hundred pounds. Removing all of the cast iron took longer than I’d anticipated, plus we started later than I’d intended. This all conspired to it being late afternoon with a giant hole in the roof and the toilet venting into the house. Considering the complications with running the line that I was also still ruminating about, we just ran a straight vent and soil stack up, using the same rubber Fernco adapters to attach the PVC so we could make modifications later.
PVC soil stack assembled without fittings
With PVC sticking out of the roof, the next step was to get onto the roof and install the flashing. There are some rotting toe boards on the roof left by the previous owner, and one of them was conveniently located where I could use it to not die while installing the flashing. However, there isn’t a good way to get to the toe board. I wound up attaching a rope to a nail on the far pitch of the roof and then using that to slowly lower myself down to the toe board (have I mentioned how scary-steep my roof is?), while carrying the flashing and a hammer.
I got the flashing installed, probably badly, and neglected to take a photo of the finished product before carefully climbing back up the rope to the relative safety of the peak of the roof. From there it’s a simple (though not easy) matter of inching to the edge, lowering myself down the slope at the edge, using the old satellite dish as a foot hold, then lowering myself over the edge onto the bracket for the pump jack, which is screwed in near the top of the wall. The good news is I didn’t fall off the roof and the puddle in the basement is gone. Thanks to Rob and Aaron for their help with this project!
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