There's many different projects in various states of completion around here, from in the planning state, to others 99% done. But it's always such a joy when a new project is added to the list that needs to be done immediately </sarcasm>, such was the case this past weekend.
One project that is currently in progress is running new electric to the shop and adding 3 yard hydrants for Daniela to easily water her planned 3000 sq ft rabbit food garden and her many plant gardens. Part of this project involves trenching from the house to the shop and yard, but first I needed to identify where the septic lines went after leaving the house as they exited the basement right around where I was planning to have the new water and electric exit the house.
After digging about 1 and half feet down I found the top of the septic line... but I started to notice something was off - the pipe exiting the house was a flex pipe. Shortly after I uncovered the pipe somebody ran some water in the owner bathroom and I saw bubbles ... something one should definitely not see in a waste pipe. At this point we knew we likely had to do something, so Daniela and I continued digging.
While I was off doing something else, Daniela dug underneath the main line and a stream of water started flowing. Definitely not what we wanted to see on a Saturday afternoon. We have a home warranty and were hoping this would be covered, but in order for that we needed to find a contractor to fix the problem. We attempted to call about 10 different contractors but the earliest anybody would come over would be Monday; mind you this is Saturday and this issue prevents us from using all but our upstairs bathroom with a scary shower.
I decided to see what exactly was the connection between the house stack and the main truck and pulled it out. It appeared to be corrugated drain line and about half a tube of silicone. Definitely not up to code. Best of all it the wye fitting in the main trunk was also cracked - hence the stream of "water" once Daniela removed the dirt underneath. The crack was most likely caused by settling of the pipe as the main pipe coming into the pit was no longer aligned with the pipe going out.
My dad graciously offered to come help fix the issue and with guidance from my Uncle Jeff we decided to takle the issue ourselves. I went off to home depot with my father-in-law (who was a huge help with other projects while he was visiting) to buy parts and aquire food as I was starting to get hangry.
While we were gone my dad arrived and Daniela continued to remove dirt around the pipe. While digging she discovered a mini-septic dirt pit that was created by the leak over many of years which was full of nasty water. The only way to remove the water was to use the shop-vac, which Daniela was not happy with as it would mean bleaching the entire thing when we were done. Once that was done, Daniela and my dad got to work removing the old fitting hub that was left on the pipe exiting the house.
Once I got back and I finished eating, we started to fix the problem by cutting the main pipeline. This allowed my dad and I to figure out what combination of fittings would work to join the two pipes correctly. Once we figured out what combinations of fittings it went together rather quickly and we had the ability to use the water in our house again.
While it was not a fun experience uncovering a major leak in a septic line, I'm glad it is now fixed and that being fixed will hopefully help some of the water issues in the basement near that location.
Thanks again to my dad and Uncle Jeff for all their help with the plumbing; and to my father-in-law for all his help over the past week with various odds-and-ends projects (such as moving 25! tires from the weeds in the back to the front yard).