Category: Underground Plumbing

Underground Plumbing Inspection

March 10, 2016 / / 2 Comments

It’s done. The final hurdle in the underground plumbing has been completed. Last week the plumbers installed the final bit of cast iron to connect our epoxy-lined sewer to the existing drain stack. All of the other underground basement plumbing was finished way back in October. This past Tuesday was the sewer lining inspection and today we passed the underground plumbing inspection. We’re finally able to start work on the concrete floor slab.

Underground plumbing

Underground plumbing

To that end we’re in contact with our contractors, but there’s a couple of things we want to finish before the floor goes in. Our plan is to stain and seal the concrete floor rather than put down any kind of flooring. We don’t want to lose a half-inch of head room in the basement to tile, since even with the dig out it’s not all that high, plus it will be radiant-heated, so we don’t want to use carpeting. Because of that, we want to finish some of the work that might make a mess of our nice new floor before we put it in. First, the basement ceiling is currently just exposed floor joists and subfloor, so we’re painting the whole thing with a sprayer. By painting it before we have a floor we don’t have to worry about drop cloths or splatters. We would have done this sooner, but the basement isn’t heated and the weather has been too cold. Fortunately for us, it’s been unseasonable warm recently.

Second, I realized I should do some of the prep on the front window and back door. We’re waiting to put them in until the floor is poured, but I don’t want to be grinding and drilling brick and getting dust all over the floor, so I’ll get as much of the prep done for that as I can. In the case of the door I can’t really install the buck until the slab is in, but I can get the opening smooth and flat and pre-drill the anchor holes. I can put the buck in for the front window and just leave the window out. I’m planning to finish both of these projects by this weekend.

Once they’re done, our next step is to have Mario, our concrete mason, prep the floor with crushed stone, rigid foam, plastic sheeting, and steel mesh. Then Lester, our radiant heating contractor, can put in the PEX tubing loops. Finally, Mario comes back and pours the concrete. We’re hoping that with the underground plumbing behind us we can start making progress again.

Sewer Lining

February 24, 2016 / / 1 Comment

It feels like a long road to get to this post. We were hoping to hire a plumber in August, but we ran into delays getting reliable quotes and we didn’t wind up signing paperwork until the latter half of September. At the time, we were told it would be “roughly six weeks” depending on permit, a qualifier that stretched and stretched and stretched the plumbing work into months and months of very little getting done. It’s been nice to have a bit of a break from working on the house all the time, but it’s a strange, frustrating sort of limbo since we don’t know how long it will take and we had hoped to not spend another winter living on the second floor with an unheated first floor.

The below-grade rough plumbing in the basement was done in mid-October, and the new water service went in back in mid-December, but the sewer lining was delayed by the city requiring the sewer “tap” to be repaired. That was finally done a couple weeks ago (mid-February), after which they needed to come back out and re-scope the sewer because the city couldn’t locate the first recording. Permit was finally issued yesterday and they “shot the liner” today. Because this —like the rest of the plumbing— was not DIY, I don’t have a ton of pictures of the process. Also it’s underground and there’s not a ton to see, but we’ve done what we could.

If you’re not clear on what sewer lining is, the short version is they make a new plastic pipe inside our existing clay sewer pipe so that we don’t have to dig everything up and lose the tree in the front yard. At the same time, said tree can’t grow roots into the pipe because it’s seamless all the way out to the sewer under the street. Here’s a video that explains the process:

With this work completed, the plumbers need to come back (possibly tomorrow) and finish the underground work by connecting the newly-lined sewer to a short section of new cast iron pipe (instead of temporary PVC), so we can finally start work on the basement floor.

Sewer Repair

February 10, 2016 / / 0 Comments
Work begins

Work begins

Finally, something got done. Apparently, CDoT (Chicago Department of Transportation) had a moratorium on permits for street work over the New Year, so that was the primary cause of delay (this time). The plumbers also said their sub-contractor’s plumbing license with the City had expired and they were trying to resolve that, but they eventually wound up hiring a different company. Either way, the sewer repair work in the street has been completed as of about an hour ago. Presumably that means now the city will come out and re-inspect the sewer line to confirm that everything looks good so it can be re-lined.

Nearing completion

Nearing completion

The biggest frustration is that from a permit perspective, this work probably could have been done back in December. I’m still not entirely sure why it wasn’t. Instead the street work permit expired and getting a new one took over a month. In the mean time I need to clean up the weeping trench, since it’s a bit of a mess where the new water service comes in.

Back to Waiting

January 5, 2016 / / 0 Comments

It’s a new year, but we’re still waiting for the basement plumbing. With the city insisting that we needed to repair the sewer tap, the plumbers had to hit us up for more money (a lot more money). The alternative was to run a new sewer line under the house that then tied into the existing sewer line in the front yard instead of re-lining the existing sewer. There are several reasons we decided against that. The first is that we already got a quote for that (from another plumber) and it was still more than doing the re-lining (even with the tap repair). The second is that the tap would still be broken and could fail in the future. The third is that the existing clay sewer line in the front yard goes under the maple tree and will need regular hydro-jetting if it doesn’t gets re-lined with epoxy. Basically, even with the additional cost, this is still a better end product for (probably) less money. Unfortunately, it’s not as much less as it was originally.

We made payment and signed paperwork on the 18th, which was of course the week before Christmas. They came out and resprayed the lines in the street and easement and put up the little marker flags, but so far nothing else has been done. I appreciate the lengths that the plumbers went to to try to save us money by getting the water department to let us skip the tap repair. At the same time, they knew this was likely back in October. If they had just relented then we’d probably be done by now. Instead this project has been going on for over three months when it was originally projected at six weeks. Now there’s snow and ice on the ground, it’s undeniably going to be more difficult, and we’re still living on the second floor and contending with our water heater, freezer, and washer and dryer running on the unheated first floor. Simply put, we’re frustrated, and the huge extra bill right before Christmas didn’t help anything.

We’re resigned at this point to another winter on the second floor, supplementing our undersized radiators with electric heaters and struggling to get the temperature up to 68°. I really hope they are able to continue work if the ground freezes.

New Water Service

December 16, 2015 / / 3 Comments
Service lines

Service lines marked

The day finally arrived! Wednesday, the plumbers showed up with trucks, trailers, an excavator , and a generator to start the water service line replacement. The water main is on the far side of the street, so they had a lot of work to do. The first step was to cut and dig a hole in the street where the existing ¾” lead service line connects to the water main. The old line runs directly on top of the sewer pipe, and the new service needs to be located ten feet away, which means the next step was to cut and excavate a second hole in the street. Unfortunately at that point the saw blade on their giant concrete saw broke and they had to give up for the day.

Work underway

Work underway

Thursday they excavated for the new buffalo box in the front easement. Hopefully the process didn’t damage our maple tree, since it provides a lot of afternoon shade, and none of our close neighbors on this side of the street have a mature tree out front. They got the second hole cut, along with a trench across the street from the buffalo box to the second hole, but at that point didn’t excavate the concrete. In the mean time they dug out a hole inside the basement at the front corner.

Marking the trench
Cutting the trench
Excavating the trench

Friday they did the horizontal bore, where they basically drilled a 2″ hole through the dirt from the buffalo box all the way to the basement, maybe twenty-five feet. Unfortunately I wasn’t home to take pictures of the process, but I could see the hole in the basement when they were done. They originally had planned to switch service on Monday, but instead they did the actual excavation of the trench and second hole in the street and ran the copper tubing into the basement from the buffalo box, plus most of the interior copper pipe which runs overhead from the front of the basement back along the beam to the mechanical room.

Hole in basement
Horizontal bore hole
Copper line coming in
New service installed

Finally on Tuesday they cut over service. The old line was disconnected from the main and cut, the new line was connected and tied in, and our new meter was in place. The plumber said he flushed water through to get the solder out of the line, but it still tastes foul. It will probably take a few days to fully clear out. There’s a leak in the valve just past the meter, so they’re coming back out today to correct that, and they still need to patch the trench in the street, which we’re reminded of every time a car drives over the steel plates, but it’s in! My next step is to put heating cable and insulation on the new line in the basement so it doesn’t freeze before we get our heated floor poured. Temperatures have been thankfully warm, but still trending lower and it’s getting below freezing at night. I also need to go clean up the weeping trench. They put the drain tile back in place, but it’s not trenched the way I had it before.