Plumbing, Take 2

Well, I now feel like I could act as a plumbing consultant (at least for OP village code) to ensure that everything comes into compliance. Educational experts always say that the best way to learn is through failure. Well, that's what happened to us, along with a whole lot of extra work. Good thing we had the extra time from a holiday weekend.

We started off by demolishing (yet another) wall in our kitchen to expose the cast iron pipe. The old vertical stack needed to be replaced since we were cutting out a section of it below. That was a bear of a job, but a special chain pipe cutter that John brought made the job easier. Unfortunately, in order to remove the old stack, we also had to replace the 1st floor bath toilet drain which was molded into the old cast iron pipe. Of course, in order to fully reach that, we had to drop one of our HVAC supply ducts in the basement. Then we were finally able to start chiseling out the old drain, which was embedded in the 3-4 inches of concrete "subflooring" under our first floor bathroom. It's hard to convey just how hard this whole process was in words, and, sadly I did not take any photos before the cast iron was removed. But the whole process took the better part of Saturday, if that gives you any idea. By the time the pipe was out, we had just enough time to run the new PVC pipe from the basement upstairs, and reconnect our toilet.

As you can see, things started to get messy and complicated in the basement utility room with all the PVC pipes from upstairs connecting in to the stack.

After failing our inspection last week, we learned we could purchase a copy of local building code amendments for "a nominal fee". Turns out that it is only $5.00! Well worth the investment, and something I wish we'd known of earlier. It will definitely come in handy as it contains the amendments for ALL building codes, not just plumbing.

So on Monday, we moved on upstairs and rerouted all of our "improper" venting in the attic. We did this early in the morning (8am!), which fortunately turned out to be relatively cool up in the attic while it was raining. By the time the showers passes, it was noon, and we had completed everything except pushing the pipe through the roof (finished later that afternoon).

Then it was down to the basement, where we were able to devise a monstrous maze of piping. (photo coming soon) Why so complicated? In order to make sure every little nit-picky thing that we could be failed for was taken care of so there was no chance of failing the inspection again.

And guess what, when the inspector came at 10:30 this morning, he was very pleased to see everything was so well done and completed correctly. So, now we can continue with flooring and framing!