Why new drain pipes? My new kitchen is located in what had been a bedroom, and bedrooms don't often have conveniently located drain pipes poking up through the floor. My new master bathroom would be completely remodeled; the old drains were all in the wrong places. Sigh.
I finally reached the point where I could no longer put off pipe relocation, so I just attacked the task head-on. I was careful not to set a timetable, or even guess how long it would take. I had previously thought it would be a monumentally difficult job, but as it turned out, it didn't take more than a week (more or less, depending how you measure time). It was very unpleasant, however, and most often I wore ear plugs, knee pads, gloves, a full face respirator (or alternatively a nose/mouth respirator or dust mask, sometimes with goggles over my glasses), and a hat to keep the clouds of concrete dust from caking in my hair.
When I first removed the tub from what would be the new master bathroom, I discovered a hole in the concrete underneath for the tub drain pipes. I was able to cut those pipes off and connect the drain pipe for my new vanity sink (then fill in the hole and cover with concrete).
That was the easy one. The new toilet will be on the other side of the bathroom from the old one, so I excavated to see what sort of piping was under the old toilet, and planned to connect the new toilet drain to wherever the old one went. Since I was removing a big section of the wall behind the old toilet (for a pocket door), all the plumbing (and wiring) that had been in that wall would have to be moved. That included the vent pipe (which ran up through the roof of the house, so the water drains freely). A new vent pipe (or two, as it turned out) would have to be installed elsewhere.
The above photo shows the old toilet flange in the foreground (stuffed with a piece of old green blanket to keep the sewer gases from flowing into the house). That's what the old toilet sat on. The larger horizontal pipe at the bottom of the hole is the 3" waste pipe connecting the toilet with a 3" vertical pipe that goes straight down 32" below the floor to the main (almost) horizontal waste drain that runs out to the street. The smaller pipe running off to the left is the old tub drain pipe (now my vanity sink drain). The vertical pipe at the top of the photo is the 2" vent pipe that went up through the roof. It's in the same vertical line as the 3" waste pipe I mentioned earlier. I would have to cut that 2" vent pipe off, as it was running through my new door.
The following photo shows the overall plan better. I've cut off the 2" vent pipe below the level of the concrete (at the right end of the opening in the concrete). The new toilet flange will be directly to the left of the old one, about a foot from the wall on the left. The trench that angles toward the left foreground will connect to a new vent pipe running up through the wall, all the way through the roof. Note my electric jack hammer (demolition hammer) sitting on the floor, without which this work would have been virtually impossible.
The next photo shows the new pipes all aligned, glued together and in place, ready to be carefully backfilled with sand and dirt.
With the fill dirt in and compacted, concrete was mixed by hand, shoveled in, and leveled (no need to pay for a gym membership).
For this first pipe rearrangement, I used my 4.5" grinder with a diamond cutting wheel to cut the trench outline in the concrete, before chipping away with my demolition hammer. The cut was really too shallow to work well, so I bought a 7" diamond masonry blade for my circular saw, and cut in three passes, maybe an inch deep or so in the 4" thick slab. It worked better, but I had to cut dry—no water (lest shocking things happen with my regular saw), and the cloud of dust it produced made it almost impossible to see the line I marked on the floor. My shop vac was pretty useless in sucking up the dust as it came away from my saw in all directions. A full-face respirator was mandatory, and contacts in my eyes, because my glasses broke the seal of the respirator and allowed the very nasty dust to be sucked in.
The other end of the bathroom will have a big shower. The drain from that will connect to the drain stack that had been used for the two old vanity sinks. Again, dig deep, cut off the 2" drain pipe, and tie in the drains from the shower, and from the sink in the new adjacent kitchen (a long run to that, going off to the right under the wall in the photo below).
You can see in the above photo, at the left and in the old wall, the remains of the old drain stack, with pipes coming off both sides for the old sinks (the vent pipe going up was also cut off at this point). After chipping away the concrete, I had to cut through the reinforcing wire mesh and dig down a foot or so through sand and dirt to put in the new drain pipes. The trench continues to the left (photo below), all the way across the kitchen, with the 2" drain pipe pitched (sloped) a minimum of 1/4" per foot of pipe run. I left the concrete in place under the wall, and tunneled underneath. I inserted the 10' length of pipe from the kitchen side.
After gluing on the new 2" vent stack, seen at the left of the photo below, I backfilled and compacted the sand and dirt, and then poured and leveled concrete.
The above photo shows the concrete in, the vent stack pipe on the left (which will continue straight up through the roof) and the stub for the shower drain. At this point, the trench had already been dug on the kitchen side of the wall on the right. (In case you haven't figured it out already, you can click on any photo to make it bigger, and can also then click through the whole gallery of photos full size.)
So, the same routine for the 2" drain pipe running across under the kitchen floor to the proverbial kitchen sink. You can see the 1.5" vertical drain pipe sticking out of the concrete in the photo below (reducer fitting used to go from 2" to 1.5" pipe). There will be no separate vent stack through the roof for this sink; I will be using something called an "air admittance valve" which lets air in (equalizing pressure) when needed to prevent a partial vacuum from forming in the drain pipe, which could pull the water out of the sink trap (letting sewer gas into the house). You'll see the air admittance valve installed when the kitchen sink finally goes in.
Oh, what a relief that was! Next, I had planned to rough in the PEX water supply lines for the pottery studio, kitchen, and master bathroom, but it seems I will need to first work on some infrastructure. The supply lines will run inside the house proper (not in the attic—where they are now, and not under the slab—where they are in some houses) along the long hallway ceiling. Unfortunately, there is an access hatch for the attic there, as well as the return duct filter housing for the uninsulated furnace (also in the attic); those will have to be moved. I am planning to replace the old broken central A/C and the awful little gas furnace in the attic with a heat pump, and put the new air handler in the as yet un-built laundry/mechanicals room.
My next post will cover the design and prep work for that rearrangement.
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