Tag: sewer

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.

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.

Basement Plumbing Update

December 1, 2015 / / 1 Comment

One of the biggest frustrations with our project for the last several months has been the basement plumbing. First, it took us forever to get quotes from more than one plumber. Then we selected a plumber (not coincidentally one that gave us quotes fairly quickly) and gave them the initial deposit. The original estimate for work was about six weeks, which was over two months ago. Most of the work hasn’t been done yet and the source of delays has largely been the City of Chicago. We pulled our original permits three years ago with a different plumber. Because the permits were already pulled, the existing permit had to be reactivated and the plumber changed. Once that was done, they were able to put in the underground plumbing for the basement bathroom, the floor drain, and the utility sink, including the ejector pit. That was when they told me they were waiting on me to finish the weeping system, which I did.

Sewer work

New basement plumbing

At the same time, they scoped the sewer with a camera and submitted the recording to the City, who came back with a concern about the “tap”, or the connection between our sewer and the sewer main under the street. The plumbers ran another scope, after which the water department decided they wanted the tap repaired. Around this time they said that our other permit for the new water service was approved, but then they turned around and said that the whole project had a “red flag” on it because the original permits weren’t pulled properly. We didn’t get an explanation of what was wrong or how that happened, but the result was that no work could be done at all.

The plumbers reported that they were able to negotiate with the city and get the red flag lifted, and the last update is that we should finally have our permits today. Then the plumbers can finally schedule the tap repair, the new water service, and the sewer re-lining. At this point I’ve gotten a bit skeptical, but this is the most positive sign so far that something is actually going to happen before the ground freezes. The plumbing is the only thing we’re waiting on to pour the new basement floor.

Basement Updates

October 5, 2015 / / 3 Comments

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been trying to complete something before making a post about it, but I haven’t finished anything other than leveling the subsoil, which I already made a post about when I was a third of the way done with it. I didn’t want to write another post just to say I’d finished, especially since flattening dirt isn’t particularly interesting, even if it is a lot of work. Instead there are about five different things in progress, all basement related, so I’ll give a run down on where we are and what we’re trying to get done.

First off: the plumbers. We’ve signed our contract, paid the deposit, permits are being pulled and/or updated, and once that’s done they can get started. Rather than dig up the existing clay sewer pipe they are going to re-line it, a process where they run a scope, clean out the pipe with water jets, then shove an inflatable sock down it all the way to the city sewer main. They inflate it and then squeeze an epoxy resin around the sock, which not only creates a whole new pipe within the existing one, it fills any cracks or holes at the same time. The result is a brand new sewer line without any digging, plus it will actually be a larger 6″ diameter pipe than it would be if it had been if we had redone it in cast iron. The sewer line will be an “overhead system” meaning it will go up to collect the drains from the first and second floor, but the basement drains will go to an ejector pit which then pumps up to the level of the first floor before entering the drain. That prevents sewer backups from flooding the basement.

Next, the plumbers will need to dig a hole in the basement and a couple pits out at the street so they can horizontally bore a new copper supply line and disconnect the old lead line. Once that enters the basement at the front there will be a new water meter and an overhead copper line running along the beam back to the mechanical room. Finally, they will be canceling our old catch basin in the back yard and running the rough plumbing for the basement bathroom. The process should take about four or five weeks, depending on permits and inspections.

While that’s going on I’ve been working on the interior weeping system (aka drain tile). I’ve dug a trench around most of the basement that will connect to a sump basin. I picked up a large 24″ x 36″ crock that’s about twice what’s required by code. I’m still researching sump pumps to put into it. For now that will tie into our sewer system, as Chicago code allows combined storm and sewer, but once we’ve redone the back yard I plan to route this into a rain garden along with the downspouts and the drainage for the walkway along the side of the house.

I’ve talked to our concrete guy about getting the back steps redone while it’s still warm enough out. Our plans call for the exterior basement steps to go to the South rather than straight out or to the North as they do now, so we need them to knock out the existing retaining walls and put in a new one. The plumbers will install  an area drain at the bottom landing that connects to the weeping system. Hopefully he’ll be out this week so we can get that process rolling. We unfortunately had to fill in the pit we had dug for the steps with all the excess dirt from leveling the basement and digging the trench.

Lastly, I tried replacing the rest of the basement windows yesterday but discovered the brick around the windows and the sills are in worse shape than I had hoped, so I called our tuckpointers. We’ll have them replace the sills and clean up the window and door openings so we can get the rest of the new windows installed. I also ordered our new back door, since it will take a few weeks to get it in.

So despite not being good about updating the blog, we are keeping busy with the house. As we finish any of these projects I’ll write posts about them individually. The weather is getting much cooler as Fall sets in, so we need to get a lot done in the next several weeks!

Contractor Wrangling

August 12, 2015 / / 0 Comments

For the first part of the year, almost the whole first half, we were going like gangbusters on the house. After we returned the mini-excavator and the last dumpster was hauled away, we kind of ran out of steam. We’d go down to the basement and putter about for a little while, digging up the rest of the disconnected sewer pipe to the catch basin, hauling out some of the remaining dirt piles, breaking up the landing outside the back door, but for the most part, a sense of dread and just being overwhelmed took hold. Digging by hand in the clay soil is just terrible and with our dumpsters gone we didn’t really have anywhere to put it. A series of over-tonnage charges came through on the dumpsters that added up to a lot of extra money. We basically got screwed on the dumpsters and should have gone straight to the hauler instead of using a service.

There were some also simple realities of life going on: our son Derek is going to speech therapy twice a week in the evenings, which occupies a decent chunk of our work time. Until she got a new job a few weeks ago, Sarah was working at a temp job that put a lot of uncertainty into our house budget. As for me, I was just sick of the basement. It’s summer, there are all kinds of things to do, and our weekends were more often than not full of fun activities with friends and family. In short, not much got done on the house.

Now that Sarah’s permanently employed, we’re back to hoping we can move into the basement before winter sets in. The only way that’s happening is if we hire out a big chunk of the work: namely finishing the dig out and pouring the new concrete floor, and the sewer plumbing. So over the last month or so we’ve been in contact with a few concrete contractors, a GC, and a couple of plumbers. We got a couple quotes on the dig out and the floor, as well as the new exterior back steps, but getting a plumbing quote has proven elusive. The GC we met with first said he would give us a quote but he never did, plus a lot of what he said really didn’t align with what I understand code to be, even though he said he knows all the inspectors and does it all the time.

Then we met with a plumber that gave us a whole different idea for how to do the sewer plumbing. We were planning on having our sewer pipe run underground, gravity-fed, with a backflow preventer (since Chicago has a combined storm system and high rain can lead to sewer backups). The plumber told us that the city now has additional requirements for backflow preventers that makes them difficult and expensive, and to instead use an overhead sewer line from the main stack to the front of the house. The basement fixtures would drain into an ejector pit that pumps up to the overhead line. The advantage is that it’s unlikely there would ever be a backup because it’s much higher up, and even if it did it would just back up to the ejector pit. Better still, we could run the whole thing in PVC instead of cast iron (which the City requires for below grade sewer). As a result it would be cheaper as well as a performing better. The disadvantage is we would have a bulkhead along the outside wall, but I think we can make that work. Unfortunately, he also said we’d have to have a trench for the new water main, since the city inspectors want to be able to see that it’s one contiguous pipe.

Unfortunately they still haven’t gotten us a quote, and now they want to come back out next week since their “outside guy” missed the last appointment. Needless to say I haven’t gotten a quote yet. We have another plumber coming out on Saturday morning. Hopefully they’ll both get us quotes; after wasting most of the summer, now we need to get moving on this project, but without quotes we can’t plan or budget.