That awkward moment when your cast-iron sewer stack collapses…30 feet tall…it just sunk 4 inches…representing when the sewer line in the ground crushed and turned into mush…yah know…killing the only operational bathroom and crippling the kitchen the day before thanksgiving and cooking and a houseful of people…
A panicked trip to the hardware store…fittings and glue and pipe purchased…
Sledge hammering the old toilet drain line (about 350 pounds of 4″ cast iron fittings leaded together) out from the crawl space so you could hook the toilet, sink, and tub to the “new” PVC sewer line helpfully installed sometime in the past…
Side note…swinging a 10 pound sledge at cast iron plumbing in the crawlspace of a 110 year old Victorian requires a particular skill set…
Working into the night by the light of LED worklights…probably killing more than a few brain cells with the fumes of PVC cleaner and glues working under the house…
A job well done. Thanksgiving saved. Life is good when the toilet will flush.
That awkward moment the next day when you discover that the “new” PVC sewer line is NOT in fact…PVC…or ABS…or CPVC…or indeed ANYTHING that should be used as drain line, but rather, is some sort of fiberglass food grade something or other that came from lord knows what that none of the glues will touch…and it won’t bond with PVC fittings and all will have to be replaced again at a later date.
Ah well. Working for now. I’ve got to change things about as I redo the two other bathrooms…and add one upstairs…I’ll start from scratch with that sewer line…
We didn’t expect this stuff to be easy did we?
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
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