Yesterday's nightmare
5 tiny little apartments all on the same property built in the 50's. The complaint was a sewer leak outside of the building when the tenant plunged the toilet.
Well I went there and someone had used a fernco on the outside of a cast iron vent fitting that they had to cut in half to install because it was too close to the building. When I took it apart and looked down there was about 2-1/2" of water in the bottom of the pipe. Top of pipe is exposed above grade and the upstream most ten feet is going uphill. I told the landlord that we can't fix the grade issue without raising the pipes inside the building which he said will have to wait until the tenant moves out. So I put a cleanout in the problem area to help keep that line going in the future.
Next thing was to check for grade across the yard ~40 feet with a string level. I had to expose a bit of the cast iron pipe near the downstream end, but for some reason the landlord wanted to keep digging. Ok, do whatever you want. Put the string line to grade and I have 15" to the string on the upstream end, and 12.5" on the downstream end.
So while i'm explaining this problem to him, he shows me where "one of us hit this line with a shovel" Well yeah, because I was digging at the cast iron joint and he was lucky enough to find a piece of orangeburg. The kicker is this little shovel hole has about a 2" tall water fountain coming out of it. 2" sounds familiar right? :vs_laugh:
So at that point I told him there's no repair for this, we have to find cast iron on the other end and replace it. So we dug up the yard and I cut the downhill end. It was completely full of turds and paper. I checked the cast iron fitting that I intended to attach to and it was installed on opposite grade. So the entire line barely has any grade but it's hitting the end where this fitting is and everything is just building up there. It wasn't plugged solid, but it took me about a half hour with a garden hose to flush all of the junk out of the line and get it flowing clear.
Then I replaced the line. It'll be a good paycheck, but I hate leaving without a 100% solution. I guess you can't force people to fix everything if they don't want to.
These are repeat customers and I know they have money, they just have to wait until later.
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Well I went there and someone had used a fernco on the outside of a cast iron vent fitting that they had to cut in half to install because it was too close to the building. When I took it apart and looked down there was about 2-1/2" of water in the bottom of the pipe. Top of pipe is exposed above grade and the upstream most ten feet is going uphill. I told the landlord that we can't fix the grade issue without raising the pipes inside the building which he said will have to wait until the tenant moves out. So I put a cleanout in the problem area to help keep that line going in the future.
Next thing was to check for grade across the yard ~40 feet with a string level. I had to expose a bit of the cast iron pipe near the downstream end, but for some reason the landlord wanted to keep digging. Ok, do whatever you want. Put the string line to grade and I have 15" to the string on the upstream end, and 12.5" on the downstream end.
So while i'm explaining this problem to him, he shows me where "one of us hit this line with a shovel" Well yeah, because I was digging at the cast iron joint and he was lucky enough to find a piece of orangeburg. The kicker is this little shovel hole has about a 2" tall water fountain coming out of it. 2" sounds familiar right? :vs_laugh:
So at that point I told him there's no repair for this, we have to find cast iron on the other end and replace it. So we dug up the yard and I cut the downhill end. It was completely full of turds and paper. I checked the cast iron fitting that I intended to attach to and it was installed on opposite grade. So the entire line barely has any grade but it's hitting the end where this fitting is and everything is just building up there. It wasn't plugged solid, but it took me about a half hour with a garden hose to flush all of the junk out of the line and get it flowing clear.
Then I replaced the line. It'll be a good paycheck, but I hate leaving without a 100% solution. I guess you can't force people to fix everything if they don't want to.
These are repeat customers and I know they have money, they just have to wait until later.
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