Thursday, May 3, 2012

Deciding to Replace

A couple weeks ago our sewer line backed up after Joanne and I took showers in the morning.

So, we had the line cleaned out and that did not go as well as hoped.  We then elected to replace our sewer line by pulling a new line through the old one.

Pretty interesting technology that wedges out the old line and pulls a full diameter line through - if nothing goes wrong.  Saves have to trench - if nothing goes wrong.  You here that phrase a lot during the process.....which goes like this.
Locate where the sewer leaves the house.
Locate where your sewer ties into the city main line.   Then notice it goes diagonal 135' through your neighbors yard, across the alley way that 4 families use for accessing their homes every day, diagonal across your concrete drive way, diagonally through your stamped concrete walk and finally under your home.
After that thought settles in, the sewer replacement rep tells you about how they can pull a new line into your house without trenching....if nothing goes wrong. 

The sales rep picks you off the floor after telling you how much it is going to cost.  Then he grabs you and prevents you from falling over again when you find out the trenching option will at least double the cost.

Nothing ventured - nothing gained, we commit to trying to pull a new line in.
They jackhammered a hole in our basement and intersected the house cast iron sewer line. 

I also had them pull out my old kitchen drain line, which we found to be in bad shape.










Fortunately, the house sewer line was in good shape.
A hole was dug down to the city sewer line where our line intersected, and a new plastic saddle connection was installed.
After several attempts a cable was fished through the old line and attached a tapered pulling head that pulls the pipe.  The tapered head bursts the old pipe and wedges it to a larger diameter to allow the 4" plastic to slide through.
This went well for..... 1 foot, then progress stopped for over an hour.   I was getting very nervous that bad news would soon come that it was time to trench.










2 comments:

  1. Isn't technology wonderful! So when do they start trenching?
    RCK

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey! You had me at "sewer"..... How does this story end??
    Mking

    ReplyDelete