The Great Plumbing Adventure

So I knew when I purchased the house that it had some problems. A couple of spots showed water damage, a clear sign that the roof was in need of repair, albeit minor. Inspections had revealed several other warts, including damaged ducting under the larger unit, a problem with the kitchen faucet in the same unit, some electrical issues that will be addressed at a later date, etc. Looming large among these problems was a bigger, stinkier problem.

The roof is an old asbestos slate roof. Becky's research indicates that the house dates back to before 1909, so I doubt the roof is the original. It is clearly as old as Methuseleh, but it seems to be holding up well for its age. Jean-Paul recommended Stokes Roofing, a local outfit he has used a number of times for a number of his properties. Mr. Stokes was wonderful, and had the repair work done in a matter of 2 days after my close. In fact, the day after he finished, New Orleans experienced one of the heaviest downpours I remember this spring. With the roof repaired, it was time to focus my attention on the problem that was actually causing me the most concern: the toilet in the rental unit.

The inspections had revealed that the toilet on the rental side had lost its drain. The pipe that was supposed to carry the flushed contents had broken loose from the piece where the toilet bolted to the floor. That piece, a collar over the drain pipe, is called the toilet flange, an in this case it was wide open to the crawlspace. This meant that anytime the toilet was flushed, raw sewerage was being dumped into the dirt underneath the house. I am not sure how long this state of affairs had existed while the previous owner was residing in that unit, but I can tell you that there were a lot of air fresheners in the closet.

So, not knowing too much about plumbing, I had called a couple of plumbers over to take a look. The first plumber glanced at the problem and immediately quoted pretty high (like multiple thousands of dollars). I am pretty sure he just didn't want to have anything to do with the mess. The second plumber that I called, on a recommendation from Jean-Paul, was Chris Montalbano of John Montalbano plumbing. Chris was full of information and not afraid to crawl around under the house. He told me that it looked like there was more damage than I had suspected, and he wouldn't know for sure what we were dealing with until he got a chance to dig up a few things under there. He gave me some advice about tracing out the pipes and getting some more information so that he would be able to "surgically strike" the problems on his next visit. I thanked him, and as he left I realized there would be some getting down and dirty for myself.

I picked up some coveralls, but before I actually got a chance to get too dirty, my friend Jack came by to see how things were going. Jack is in the midst of a much, much more intense remodel. He purchased a home right after the storm that had gotten some water damage. He gutted it to the studs, re-roofed it, levelled it, ran his plumbing and electricity, framed out rooms, and now has his bathroom tiled. He has a wealth of knowledge to share about all of the phases of the project he has been through, and he had the suggestion that we tear up the bathroom floor to get to the toilet drain. I have to say, that idea beat the crap out of crawling through it. He also suggested that it would be much, much cheaper for us to repair the pipes ourselves. Since he apparently had the expertise to help me with this project, I decided to opt for the "Do it yourself" solution.

Tearing up the floor was easy. First, we removed the toilet and set it on some old towels in the bathtub. That way, any leakage from the water in the tank actually went down a drain pipe (for the first time in who knows how long). A brittle piece of old, yellowing linoleum glued only at the edges came up in seconds, revealing a sheet of 3/4" plywood covering most of the bathroom floor. With a hammer and a device like a mini crowbar we pulled nails out of it until we could use real crowbars to get it out. We saw an old cast-iron pipe sticking out of the mud which is where the "flush" is suposed to go.

Seemed easy enough at that point. Home Depot has rubber "boots" that can join pipes together. Some PVC pipe and a boot and we could have this thing fixed in an hour or so. We acquired our parts and began the repair. Unfortunately, at some point during this process the pipe we were working with just fell over. Into the, um, mud. After some evaluation, which included some shovelling and clearing, we determined that we still needed to use a boot or two, but in different places and with more PVC. A long, sweaty, stinky day later, we had a pipe coming out of the floor which successfully connected into the sewer system, and the foundation was laid for the toiled to be reattached. Of course, since I plan to tile, the toilet is going to have to wait to actually be reinstalled. More later.