Split Pipe!

Today's project was to look at a water leak coming from one of the outside walls in one of my 3 bedroom duplexes. This wall is located in the basement stairwell and is located below the upstairs bathroom. The wall was an old plaster wall, with the plaster beginning to deteriorate. There was clear evidence that water had been leaking both inside the house and through the wall to the outside of the house. The big question was where the water was coming from. I questioned the tenant about when it was leaking. She said that the leak seemed to occur every day and it didn't need to be raining for the wall to leak. That led me to believe that the leak was coming from the bathroom above the stairway. I could also deduce that the leak was not a broken water line because the leak wasn't happening all the time.

My next step was to try to determine what was leaking in the bathroom. At this point, it was obviously coming from the commode, shower, or sink. So, I decided to start by flushing the commode. That was all it took! After flushing the commode, water ran steadily out of the wall.

With the commode apparently leaking, that meant that I would need to remove the wall so that I could see what was occurring. I got my claw hammer and pry bar from the truck and started to demolish the wall. It didn't take long before the cause of the leak was crystal clear - the 4 inch cast iron sewage line inside the wall was split wide open vertically along almost the entire length of the pipe. By the time I got the wall demolished and all the mess cleaned up, it was about 2pm (I didn't start today until about 12:30 pm). I had a personal engagement at 3pm, which didn't leave me enough time to cut out the cast iron pipe and replace it with PVC. So, I used some furnace putty to fill the 1/4 " wide split in the pipe and I will replace the pipe tomorrow.

After my 3pm appointment, I went for a nice 7 mile bike ride on a new course. This course had one hill that was really a killer, which made for a very good workout. The weather is supposed to be good again tomorrow and I'm looking forward to another bike ride then.

BTW, today was the first official day of rent collection. I received all my Section 8 rents in the mail and I also collected a few private pay rents.