Uh Oh, Six Inches Short!

June 28th, 2008 | by admin | No Gravatar

Cowboy Plumbing - DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD

Unfortunately the cowboy who extended this house didn’t extend the waste pipe to match! Whoever did the work was already awarded 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 befor some minor modifications we discovered that the pipe did not actually extend into the underground vitreous clay pipe. There was a six inch gap as can be seen in the second photo. The builder, for whatever reason, 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 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 it originated.

Problem solved!

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