Basement Plumbing Re-cap

The basement plumbing project has been finished for a few weeks now but I wanted to get a little space between myself and the project before writing about it.  This was the best way to "let the dust settle", literally, and look at the project in a broader perspective. 

The final project took about a week and a half to complete.  I had one call back to the plumber because we had a very small leak in the main stack.  They, of course, came over immediately to fix it.   Everything is working just fine and the cleanup from the project is about half-done.  I can't help but still be anxious about the whole endeavor.  I would really like for us to get a good heavy rain to see if the whole thing works and to see if additional work is needed to remedy any groundwater issues.  I guess time will tell. 

I am very happy with the plumbers we used.  We worked with Rob West Plumbing out of Chicago and I would recommend them to anyone that is going to take on such a project.  They were responsive and smart about the project and the final cost was at their estimate.  The cost of such a project can vary greatly, depending on your home and what it requires.  We have heard prices as low as $3,000 and as high as $10,000.  In addition to the pit, pump and re-plumbing of the basement fixtures and drains, we had them install a high water alarm in the pit, repair a broken catch basin and fill holes from the catch basin to any piping in the basement and downspouts.  The cost included getting a permit from the Village, the final concrete work and designated outlet and related electrical work.  With all of this, we were near the upper end of the price scale.

If you are going to take on such a project, there are still several things I would suggest:

1.   Prior to demolition, provide your own protection in the work area.  Cover everything you want protected with plastic and seal off the area as much as possible.  If you have a forced air HVAC system, turn off the system during work and block the intake.

2.   Invest in renting a hepa filter or other similar ventialtion system used in construction to vent the area during demolition.  This is another item we had access to but since we never anticipated the amount of dust that could be caused byt it, we did not set it up.  It would have saved us a lot of headaches.

3.   If you have an uneven basement floor and if they are removing significant amounts of your basement slab, consider having entire portions or the entire slab re-poured.  I wish we had taken on this project 4 years ago.  If we had, and if I hadn't already had a finished basement with a ton of stuff in it, I would have had the entire basement slab removed and re-done.  At the very least, if I knew what the demo would entail, I would have cleaned out the entire back of the basement and done that half this year.  I wasn't prepared for this at all.  They only did "trenches" for our plumbing and I regret not having the foresight to do more.

4.  If you are picky about the concrete work, you may want to have a concrete specialist complete the concrete filling portion.  I am happy with the job I got and am not too picky about how the concrete looks down here but I imagine that people with nicer basements might be more discerning and want a higher quality concrete and finish look.

5.   Make sure you know what your bid includes.  Our bid was pretty much all-inclusive: from permitting to finish concrete and the guys at Rob West handled everything well.  I have heard of other plumbers that do some of the work but rely on "others" for things like the electrical hook up, concrete, permit, etc.  This could be a real pain and an unwanted surprise, to find out you need to do something extra in the middle of the job.        
Ultimately, I don't wish the sewer backup issues on anyone and hope that others don't have to make this kind of investment in your home.  If so, I wish you luck and hope this string of posts was helpful. 

Day Seven in the Basement: Inspection

No, you didn't read the title wrong and I didn't skip a few days.  It has been seven days on the project but nothing has happened the past few.  Inspection was scheduled for Monday so we had nothing over the weekend and then the inspector didn't show Monday so we had another day off. 

Yesterday, the inspector arrived and things can proceed.  The huge bonus to this was that they could finally hook up our laundry sink and we can do laundry again.  I have to climb over the grand canyon that is our basement floor but after a week without laundry, it is worth it.  The timing and inability to do laundry for so long was certainly not in our schedule.  Nor was our daughter getting the stomach flu, thus increasing the amount of gross laundry we had to do.   

I've been unhappy with the basement progress so I figured I would get something done to make me feel better about things.  Well, here's another project that didn't work out as planned.  I have all of the new light switches for the main rooms and decided to install them.  I have two problems now.  The dining room switch will require some additional plaster patching and painting up to the switch.  I guess the old plate covered more of the "hole" than the new one.  I also now hate how the HVAC controls look on this wall.  I believe I can move the humidification controls to the basement but I am not sure what to do with the thermostat. 

The switches in the living room didn't fare so well either.  The box behind the left switches was installed at a slight angle and not at the same height as the existing box.  I am going to have to go back in and fix this or it is apt to drive me crazy.  This also means more patching and painting.  On the bright side, I love the new switches and they add a lot to the room.

Day Three in the Basement: Finishing the Piping and Installing the Pump

I figured that since I was spending so much money on this project that a panoramic view of the work was in order.  The plumbers finished the plumbing today and everything is awaiting inspection.  The inspectors won't arrive until Monday so we won't be able to have the final concrete done until then. 

All of the connections are made at the pump side of the basement and things laid out how I thought, though not exactly how they initially planned it.  This is a good thing because their initial plan would have called for some demolition within the actual living area and that wouldn't have been a good thing.  I think they did a good job laying this out.

As part of the work, we also invested in a high-water alarm.  This will tell us if the pump is not working and the basin is full so that we don't make the mistake of running the laundry or any other plumbing fixtures, causing additional problems.  We only have a pump for the overhead plumbing system and do not have a sump.  I don't believe that our issue has ever been groundwater.  It seems to have always been sewer water.  Even if you are just a casual visitor to the blog, you would know that we disconnected our downspouts and  installed rain barrels years ago, so we are not adding any of our own storm runoff to the home's wastewater system. 

I figured that I would add this diagram to explain to folks what everything is.  People commonly call this system an "overhead plumbing" system because it puts all of the waste water from the basement into a central area.  In this case, it is collected in a basin.  The basin has a pump that pumps the water up overhead in a pipe that connects the the gravity-fed wastewater system (the waste stack) from the plumbing upstairs.  It is this loop that keeps water from coming into the basement from the municipal sewer.  When there is a sewer backup, it can get into this pipe but only travel as high as the surge from outside.  The only way it could get in the house is if the water got higher than that loop.  In this case, all of Chicagoland would likely be under water and we'd have greater problems than my tiny finished basement.    

I've scheduled some additional repairs on my catch basin because of some flooding we had a few weeks ago caused by that.  The plumbers also have a few other minor odds and ends to fix up so they will be returning tomorrow.  I probably won't post again on the subject until after inspection though.

Over the past couple days, I've thought again and again, "why the hell are we going through this".  It has been messy, inconvenient and expensive.  I then look at the old photos of all of our stuff in the basement submerged in almost a foot of sewage and it all seems to make sense.

 

Day Two in the Basement: Laying Pipe

If I said that I completely understand what is going on in the basement, I would be lying.  This isn't good because I am usually adept at these things.  I guess the best I can do now is describe what is going on in the pics.  The first pic is a view to the south of the basement.  Past the water heater is where there will be a connection to our laundry and the vent stack.  To the right of the water heater is an existing floor drain. 

Below is a detail of the new laundry and vent stack connection.  I am guessing that the work on this side of the house would buy us a nice long weekend vacation in Orlando to visit the family.

Directly east is a connection to the area drain in the stairs to the back yard.  I've plugged up the hole under the door for the evening but I hope no mice sneak in. 

This next pic is a view north, toward the back of our basement bath.  This is where all of the action is.  The basin and pump are going here.  If I am correct, sewage gets pumped up, from the basin, to the open fitting in the big pipe coming down from the bathroom above and the waste exits through the existing drain, out to the street.  I believe that the work on this side of the house would afford us a vacation in New York City where we could visit with friends we haven't seen in far too long, eat real pizza, and enjoy a decent pastrami sandwich. 

I can't quite tell but I think that all of the plumbing from the bathroom has been routed to the basin and only the plumbing from above stayed in the drain to the street. 

Here is our permit and a bunch of pump and fitting supplies.  We have an inspection tomorrow and hopefully they will finish up and be out of here by the end of the day.  I think the guys did good work today.  The place is less dust-ridden, even though they did a little more saw-cutting. 

Day One in the Basement: Excavation

Given what I came home to today, I think it is good that I wasn't around for the first phase of the work.  My plumber was nice enough to give me regular e-mail updates: "we're locating the pit in the corner", "we have to replace a pipe because the pitch isn't right", "we have to replace a fitting because it didn't meet code", etc.  None of them were the magical, "you know, we don't have to do this work because we found a real easy way to fix everything.

Note: in the above photo, they are just storing the pipes in the trench.  They will not be laying nine pipes together in the trench.  At least I think they are not...

So the basement is now dug up.  They saw-cut a series of trenches and excavated out the dirt where the new plumbing is going.  In the process, they changed the location of the pit.  It is actually not that bad where it will end up but it still takes up a decent chunk of space. 

The architect side of me finds all of this fascinating - particularly how thin the basement slab is.  "Hmm, maybe I can break this sucker up and dig down a few inches to get more headroom in here."  (wife slaps me across the face).  Actually, that didn't happen but the thought did cross my mind for a second.  As for the work at hand,  I realize that I haven't given a full description of what is going on.  I was hoping that once they get the piping in, I can take pics and it will be easier to explain.  I guess we'll find that out tomorrow. 

It is wild yet disconcerting that you can see the water level as well.  It's a couple feet below our slab.  Nice thing to have in the back of my mind during the next 100 year flood. 

For most of the work, I give the guys an A+.  It seems to be going well.  For the protection end of it, I give them a C-.  They did cover a lot of the delicate electronics and tried to seal off the area where they were doing demo but there is still dust pretty much everywhere in the house.  It doesn't help that they are working in the same room as the air handler for the house.  I really should have thought better and shut it off for the day.  My lack of thinking is what saves them from getting an "F". 

The basement looks scary.  Not as scary as a foot of sewage but still pretty scary.  Hopefully we see things come together quickly tomorrow.   

I am not sure if I have mentioned this before but my wife has a weak stomach for renovation projects.  She clearly married the wrong guy.  She went nuts with the few weeks where I was working on the wood upstairs.  I think if there is another day of this, she may end up at a local hotel.

Cleaned and Ready

The plumbers arrive tomorrow at 8:00am.  I've cleaned up a good chunk of the shop and laundry area so hopefully they have enough room to work.  Of course, this means that the living area is filled with tools and other crap but I can get to organizing that once the plumbers are done.   

I also took a little extra time and put some weather stripping on the basement door.  There is a noticeable improvement but I think I need to find an insulation blanket to put over the entire opening. 

The First Project of 2012

Happy New Year everyone.  I figure I've already wasted about 10 hours of the New Year so I better get started on my first house project.  What better way to start the new year than to dig up portions of the basement slab and have new plumbing and sewer backup mitigation measures put into place? 

We have dealt with flooding for two consecutive years now and it is time to do something about it.  The down-side is that this will cost an insane amount of money and will have no impact on the overall look of the Tiny Bungalow.  Yeah, we won't have sewage in the basement anymore but I can think of about a hundred other places in the house where this kind of investment will make a dramatic improvement. 

The project starts with cleaning out the basement and making way for the work.  After the last project which, by the way, is not complete, I threw all of my supplies in the basement to make the upstairs presentable for guests.  Since before Thanksgiving, there has been little change.  I need to clean it up. 

I will get the added benefit of having all of my tools put away in the correct spot so that I can start the next project on the right foot.  Then again, since I rarely have the tools in their "right spot", it is more likely that I will be even more confused and have a harder time starting a project because I can't find anything. 

The plumbers arrive on Tuesday and are supposed to be done by Friday.  They have a solid estimate and a defined scope.  We'll see how that holds up once they start digging.