Nick Ostrowski
06-05-2011, 05:30 PM
I had the worst day today from a home improvement standpoint.
Here's the scenario. We live in a 110 year old brick twin, Back in 2001, we had our entire sewer line replaced from the basement out to the end of the yard (close to 200 feet). The old line ran underneath our rear patio at the right-hand rear corner of the house and was sealed off (or so I thought) when the new line was installed along the left-hand side of the yard (20 feet away). Fast forward to today. I am replacing the crappy wooden steps and landing we have out back with an L-shaped deck. I got started on the footers today and everything was going fine until I got to digging the 3rd and final footer. This footer was going right where the old sewer line ran. I knew the old terra cotta line was still down there so when I got to it, I just broke right through it because it's no longer in use..........WRONG. It's not in use by us but it is in use by out attached neighbor. I got the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach once I confirmed it was our neighbors sewer line and saw water build up in the footer hole after I ran some water in her house. I had my wife make some calls while I continued to dig around the broken sections and she was able to locate a local plumber who came out this evening and temporarily got our neighbor hooked back up. The fix is just for tonight and he's going to come back tomorrow and put the proper 6" pipe in. What a friggin' nightmare.
Take a look at these pics. In the 3rd one, look at direction our neighbor's sewer line comes from......beneath my house. It's a total clusterf*ck. Somewhere after the neighbor's main sanitary stack goes into the floor in her basement, it angles over and runs beneath our basement floor. Her entire sewer line lateral is on our property. It turns out that before we had our sewer line replaced in 2001, we shared the same sewer line with the neighbor. The plumbers who replaced our line in 2001 left the original terra cotta lateral in place and our neighbor has experienced no problems. It seems it was common when these houses were built to run the sewer lines this way, probably to save money on the installation. Ugh.
When it comes to old houses, take nothing for granted. When I started digging the footers, our son said to me "maybe you'll hit water". Talk about a prophecy.
Here's the scenario. We live in a 110 year old brick twin, Back in 2001, we had our entire sewer line replaced from the basement out to the end of the yard (close to 200 feet). The old line ran underneath our rear patio at the right-hand rear corner of the house and was sealed off (or so I thought) when the new line was installed along the left-hand side of the yard (20 feet away). Fast forward to today. I am replacing the crappy wooden steps and landing we have out back with an L-shaped deck. I got started on the footers today and everything was going fine until I got to digging the 3rd and final footer. This footer was going right where the old sewer line ran. I knew the old terra cotta line was still down there so when I got to it, I just broke right through it because it's no longer in use..........WRONG. It's not in use by us but it is in use by out attached neighbor. I got the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach once I confirmed it was our neighbors sewer line and saw water build up in the footer hole after I ran some water in her house. I had my wife make some calls while I continued to dig around the broken sections and she was able to locate a local plumber who came out this evening and temporarily got our neighbor hooked back up. The fix is just for tonight and he's going to come back tomorrow and put the proper 6" pipe in. What a friggin' nightmare.
Take a look at these pics. In the 3rd one, look at direction our neighbor's sewer line comes from......beneath my house. It's a total clusterf*ck. Somewhere after the neighbor's main sanitary stack goes into the floor in her basement, it angles over and runs beneath our basement floor. Her entire sewer line lateral is on our property. It turns out that before we had our sewer line replaced in 2001, we shared the same sewer line with the neighbor. The plumbers who replaced our line in 2001 left the original terra cotta lateral in place and our neighbor has experienced no problems. It seems it was common when these houses were built to run the sewer lines this way, probably to save money on the installation. Ugh.
When it comes to old houses, take nothing for granted. When I started digging the footers, our son said to me "maybe you'll hit water". Talk about a prophecy.