We’re committed now, honey...

Last week I blogged about our sewer’s propensity for backing-up on holidays like Thanksgiving and Easter. We now know exactly why it was doing that, and we believe it won’t be happening again. This week we gave our sewer system bypass surgery; that is, we totally replaced nearly 30’ of old root-infested and leaking clay pipe, with shiny new black ABS. We still have another 30’ section to replace, but the section we worked on this week is the one that’s been giving us headaches.

Trissa got us started on Tuesday, the second day of her week-long Easter break, by beginning to dig a hole near the existing cleanout in the yard. Her plan was to dig down until she found the pipe, then follow it. We had a good idea of where the pipe would run, thanks to the sewer diagram we found on the city website, but we didn’t really know the exact location, or how deep the pipe would be.

We got lucky. Our front yard is a hill, and the sewer pipe was buried only about 18” deep for the main run as it follows the hillside. Trissa estimates she spent about 8 hours digging into the hillside to expose the pipe, which unsurprisingly was mostly comprised of the original clay pipe, built in 2’ sections. At several of the joints it was apparent that leaks had developed, as we could see water pooling in the dirt under the joint when we ran water down the drain. (This confirmed why the grass would grow so much greener and faster in certain spots in our yard…) There was one section at the corner that had been replaced with plastic, but it too was showing signs of failure.

I took Friday off with the plan of replacing the old clay pipe. We spent a couple hours in the morning doing some final digging, then headed to Home Deposit to purchase the hardware. $75 later and a quick trip to McLendon’s Hardware for a coupling that HD didn’t carry, we were ready to get started. I used a sledge hammer to break one section of pipe (“We’re committed now, honey…”), which made it a relatively simple task to remove the rest of the sections unbroken.

Some of the sections of pipe showed severe blockage. Pretty darn disgusting.

With all of the sections removed, Trissa cleaned up the bottom of the trench so that we could easily install the new pipe. We dry fitted all of the pieces first to make sure they’d fit. Then, starting at the cleanout, I began bonding it all together. ABS cement actually welds two pipes together, and if I did everything okay, we shouldn’t have any leaks (and roots shouldn’t be able to get in either!)

Today we have to finish filling in the trench with dirt. Somehow, I think we have more dirt in our yard than will fit in the trench, but we’ll figure it out. Then, we need to decide whether and when to dig the second trench for the 30’ of pipe that runs alongside our house from the stack to the cleanout where we left off. That dig will be a little more challenging, as the trench will need to be about 6’ deep at one end.