DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD

Cowboy Plumbing

The cowboy who built the extension on to this house didn’t put much care into anything he did. Some of his work has already won a previous Cowboy of the Week Award for an unsafe boiler installation. See the May 3, 2008 Cowboy Award. This time however we were on site to move the bathroom to a new location.

When we went to inspect the existing waste pipe before making some modifications we discovered the tiny sink hole and at appeared to be a lack of pipe work. As we dug out the loose dirt we found that the waste pipe didn’t extend into the underground vitreous clay pipe. There was a six inch gap! The builder, must have been to lazy or cheap to replace the pipe work extend it so pushed a bit of mortar around the open edges and then covered the evidence with paving slabs!

We dug down and cleaned out the debris that had also fallen into and was plugging the waste pipe and then replaced the pvc pipe with a slightly longer length. Six inches to be exact. We tied in our modified waste pipe from the new bathroom location and then fastened it all together and added the required pipe clips. The whole job only took an hour or so and should have been done properly in the first place.

When we asked whether or not the home owner had ever noticed the smell of sewer gas we were informed that periodically that they did but didn’t know where the smell originated.

The final photo shows the solution. We replaced the entire length of pipe with the proper length. Tape measures. Wow! Problem solved!

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1. Danger of the Week Award – Cowboy Plumber