A couple bumps along the road

[Ryan Short]

I bought a 4 family property in June. I have been doing a full renovation to the second and third floor units. The first floor has 2 units with leases, a 1BDRM and a 2BDRM. The second floor has a 3BDRM unit and the third floor has a 4 BDRM unit. I was working on the second floor a couple weekends ago when my tenant came running in saying there is a lot of water coming from the ceiling in the food pantry. So I ran down into the basement and shut off the water main. The bathroom was just finished on the third floor that day. One of my workers flushed the toilet for the first time since the summer when he installed the new toilet. I went above where the leak was on the second floor, which ended up in the food pantry. I found out that the previous owner put a small access wall at the bottom of the pantry/closet. That's how I found out I had a inch wide crack in my cast iron stink pipe. So I called a pipe lining company who put a camera down the pipe and found out it was a 10 foot long crack spiraling down the pipe. The pipe lining company quoted $6500, I guess it's $4000 just for the truck to show up. So I knew it would be cheaper to get a plumber to do it but that would also probly cost over 3000. So my brother and I wanted to open the wall for the plumber to save money. We cut out a small wall, floor to ceiling. That's when we figured out we could probably cut out the cast iron pipe and do it ourselves. We ended up rented a cast iron pipe cutter and buying pvc and grommets that we needed. All in all, it took 5 hours and about $200 to cut out and install 10 feet of a stink pipe. As we were doing this another pipe started leaking under the floor in the closet. So we ripped up a small 2 foot section of the floor and replaced the corroded hot water pipe. I'm so lucky and happy that all of the piping in my house is in a chase so 80% of the water went down into the basement. The floor and wall was already opened so we cut out most of the old copper and steel pipes and replaced them with pex pipping. I'm so glad this happened when the top 2 floors were vacant. "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger"