Inspection on Monday

Friday, "Jackhammer" John finished for the week and left a note that said the City inspector would be out Monday afternoon. He has routed all the new drain lines, but not the new vent line from the bathroom. Once the inspection is complete, he will start back filling and repair the cement floor. We had him put a new drain in the floor of the bath to accommodate a future shower. He also reconnected the washer and dryer for us to use over the weekend.

For some reason, the floor in the bathroom area never got a second layer of cement as did the rest of the laundry area. When he repairs the cement floor, I have asked John to bring the new bathroom floor up to the same level as the rest of the laundry area. To facilitate this, Saturday morning, I removed the walls of the bathroom. I recovered as much of the ribbed wall paneling as possible for T to use at her country estate.

Bathroom with walls and door

Bathroom without walls and door

I also broke up more of "the bulge" in the cement floor under the conservatory. It appears there is sound earth below it. No cavern was found and, it appears, we'll just pour a new cement floor. That is a relief.

Update on "The Dig"

The indoor portion of the sewer replacement effort has turned into a project in itself. As expected, Mark (indoor plumbing) came by early this morning to discuss the path forward. The cast iron laterals to the east room sink drain, the bathroom and the washer drain are all kaput. Looking at them this morning, all that is left of the piping is the hole itself.

Laterals to washer drain and east room sink drain.

Yesterday, we told "Jackhammer" John that we wanted to replace the line to the bathroom and were willing to abandon the east room sink. In place of the east room sink, we wanted to have provisions installed to install a new laundry sink in the west laundry room.

Sink in the east room (to be removed)

Mark's concerns this morning were in the bathroom. Replacing the lateral line to the toilet, sink and bathtub in the bath will require complete excavation of the bathroom floor. Due to the scope of this work, he felt certain the City would classify this as a "remodeling" project and not just a "repair". The distinction is significant. A remodeling job mandates that the completed facilities meet current code requirements. In addition to the unbudgeted costs associated with the underground piping replacement, we would also need to modify existing the bathtub and the vent piping to meet code.

Basement Tub

The tub is an ancient, ~ 300 pound, enameled cast iron, claw footed vessel. It has a water inlet nozzle only a couple of inches above the bottom of the tub. This was common in the tubs of this era, but it is completely illegal today. The decision we came to is to abandon the tub and make it disappear. We will probably replace the current sink and toilet at some time, but for now we will just re-install the current fixtures, moving them westward, along the brick wall, to conform to code spacing requirements. We will also have them install provisions for the future installation of a shower stall. I suggested T consider a sauna as an alternative to a shower.

Now, concerning the vent line. The current vent is 1-1/2" PVC pipe. That's fine except that current code requires the vent pipe to be at least one-half the diameter of the drain line which, by code, can be no smaller than 4". The current vent pipe ties onto the vent line at the washer drain, which goes up the interior of the south wall all the way to the roof. To meet code using this current route, we would have to replace the entire vent line through three stories to the roof. An alternative would be to tie the new 2" vent from the basement bathroom to the 2" vent coming off the first floor powder room. Yes, the same powder room we just finished remodeling over the past weekend. The tie-in would need to be at least four feet off the powder room floor. The only way to make this tie-in is to cut a hole in the wall, make the tie-in and then make repairs to the wall and T's new wallpaper. That's the plan for now.

The guys reconnected the main sewer line before they left so we can flush again. The house is full of the sickening sweet ketone stench of PVC cement. Tomorrow, they will be back again to work on the bathroom lateral and vent piping.

One further event in the basement today was the initial break through of "the bulge" in the concrete floor below the conservatory. "Jackhammer" John took a sledgehammer to it. There is definitely an air pocket under the bulge, but until more is broken out, we don't know how much of a project this will turn out to be. At a minimum, we will be pouring a new concrete floor. This may wait until the work on the bathroom is completed.

Learning New Stuff Is Fun

We got a call from Christine Ingrassia (our City Alderwoman) this morning. We had sent Christine an email two days ago asking her what approvals, if any, we would need if we wanted to pursue the paving of the alley running along the back of our property. She called to confirm she had received our email and was working to gather the appropriate records to determine the current status of the alley. She said her search of readily available records did not indicate the City had ever "vacated" the alley. But, she wanted to go back into more distant records to ensure that has never been done. If the alley has not been vacated, she said we could either initiate the process to do so OR we could look into steps to improve the City's maintenance of the alley. In our email to Christine, we had mentioned that several of the property owners adjoining the alley, thinking we were responsible for its upkeep, had previously contributed money to have new gravel laid down. The prevailing belief, among the property owners, is that since the property boundary markers meet in the center of the alley, the ownership of the alley is split between the property owners on either side of the alley. Hence, the alley running along the back of our property is half on our property and half on the property behind us. If this is not the case, and if the City is responsible for its maintenance, we will have to rethink our proposal to pave it. To our knowledge, this is the only alley in the surrounding neighborhoods that is not hard surfaced. If the City is responsible for its upkeep, perhaps we can petition them to surface it. We'll wait to see what else Christine discovers.

A Spurt of Activity and Some Disappointing Findings

Other than Tony's (the best [tree remover] there is) stump removal work on Monday of last week, nothing else happened during the week. Mike called yesterday afternoon to say that Mark (indoor plumbing) will be here today to continue with the sewer replacement effort.

At 7:00 am today, Mark did indeed show up with "Jackhammer" John (he will do the actual work). The plan is to replace the sewer line, from where Vern (outside plumbing) stopped outside, to the indoor drains. That will entail chipping out the concrete floor in the basement to get to the original cast iron lines. They plan to do the chipping today and finish with the new PVC line installation tomorrow. They will also make tie-ins to two known lateral drain lines (they may find more). One lateral is from the basement bathroom and the other is from the sink in the southeast basement room. The scope of their work may expand if they find additional laterals and/or the ones they find are in bad order and need to be replaced. Not surprisingly, soon after John began chipping on the basement floor, he identified another old concrete floor beneath the visible concrete floor in the laundry area.

Mike also showed up and we all discussed the routing of the utility lines from the main house out to both the sunroom and the garage. The original plan was to run all the utility lines (hot water, cold water, purified (RO) water, power and natural gas) through a chase running beneath the porch connecting the main house to the sunroom. This would require electrical heat tracing to prevent freezing (thanks global warming!). The alternative, which we all agreed is a better approach, is to bring the utilities out through the basement wall at a depth of 42"-48" (well below the frost line), with draining provisions in the basement. We will run a separate cold water line to the garage so that it can be winterized independently from the sunroom. The garage will have its own hot water heater.

I reminded everyone that we intend to run purified water from our existing basement RO unit to both the bar ice maker as well as to a separate bar sink tap. I believe the existing RO unit has sufficient capacity to satisfy the demands of both the main house as well as the sunroom. Mark suggested that we consider putting in a new under-the-counter RO unit in the sunroom bar. Otherwise, by code, he would have to run 1/2" copper tubing to the sunroom from the basement RO unit. I vetoed putting in an under-the-counter unit, because it occupies so much space, I hate the thought of doing plumbing maintenance work under the counter and finally, I do not believe a new RO unit would be cost effective compared to cost of a 1/2" copper line.

Then there is the basement concrete floor under the main floor conservatory. This concrete floor is buckled upward. This was the condition when we moved in back in 2003, and we do not believe it has worsened since then. Previously, Vern expressed his opinion that this buckling was probably a result of a poor installation job. However, to be sure, we are going to have them chip it away, ensure there is solid earth underneath, grade the earth and pour a new concrete surface. It will cost a bit, assuming that they do not find a sink hole underneath concrete, but we feel we will be more comfortable knowing for sure.

I told Mike that I had spoken with Kent (neighbor behind us) about the potential of extending our new concrete drive across the alley to connect to his driveway. Kent was very enthusiastic about the idea. I also sent an email to Christine, our City Alderman, asking her what approvals would be required (if any) to pave over this portion alley. While waiting for her response, I asked Mike to find out what the additional pavement would cost.

I mentioned to Mike that we were still debating where to locate the solar panel inverter panels. The options are: 1) inside basement wall; 2) inside garage; 3) outside on the east side of the main house. Of these three, we are leaning toward the outside option. The east side of the main house is where we are intending to relocate the two AC condensing units and our two trash cans. Hence, this will be a "utility" area and seems to be a good place to also install the inverters. Drew (solar) said he could build a metal frame on which the two inverter panels could be mounted. The frame would be roughly 6' wide, 6' tall and, with the inverters mounted, about 1' deep. Therefore, I told Mike that the slabs we need on the east side of the main house need to accommodate this inverter frame as well as the two AC units. Plus, I suggested we would want to provide room for a future AC unit as well.

Mike said he has scheduled the foundation to be laid during the week following next (that would be the week of Sept 29). Therefore, he will schedule to have "Bobcat" Tom back next week to do the excavation for the foundation. If this all happens, Mike will have gotten pretty close to his target of having the foundation in during September. All could be influenced by the weather, but right now, it looks promising.

Mike did not mention the schedule for trenching and burying the incoming power and communication lines.

As the day progressed, the basement sewer news got worse and worse. The cast iron lateral pipes tying into the sewer line are paper thin and cannot be used. We have decided we are willing to abandon the lateral connected to the sink drain in the east room. We will have Mark install a new drain and water taps on the west wall to accommodate a new sink next to the washer and dryer. The lateral to the bathroom will have to be excavated and replaced. While this is unfortunate, it is not a surprise. We are paying for 120 years of use plus some dubious decisions made over those same years. This is why we have a contingency in the budget, and it is something we would need to do sooner or later, regardless of the backyard overhaul project.

On the brighter side, over the weekend, we finished the rehab of the powder room off the butler's pantry on the first floor. T did a nice job. Looks good.

"Jackhammer" John will be back in the morning to continue the effort. Maybe our luck will change and he'll find a buried treasure while burrowing into the basement bathroom.

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