How the monster was conquered...

After the December drama we went on our merry little way...thinking we were probably good to go in the plumbing department since no one seemed overly concerned. If only it were that easy! The amount of detail and photos in this post may be super boring to many of you but I need to document it for our family record.

One late afternoon in April I went to draw a bath for Heidi and Nathan in the basement bathroom. As I went to plug the bathtub I noticed a little bit of black residue around the drain and wondered what it might be. At the same time, I noticed Nathan was having a hard time getting the toilet to flush properly. The dots started to connect in my brain and I quickly ran to the laundry room to see if we were having any problems there. Much to my horror, sewage was bubbling up out of the floor drain, this time at a pretty good rate. 

I ran and plunged the toilet as a desperate attempt to slow the flow of black gunk coming out of that drain. It didn't help at all. I told the kids a bath wasn't happening, closed the laundry room door and ushered everyone upstairs. I texted Trent at the hospital to let him know there were problems at the home front but that we were okay upstairs. With a newborn, and Trent working all hours of the day and night I didn't know what resources of time and energy we would have to deal with this problem and that fact alone was a very daunting thought. 

The back up came from this little (and very disgusting) drain. Lucky for all of us that we don't have a picture of the sewage flowing out! 

This was the worst of all the back-ups we had. It filled the laundry room, seeped under the walls into the garage and bathroom and leaked out onto the hallway carpet the adjoined to the family room. Once again we called the folks at Paul Davis and trusty Owen and his crew came to help us with the clean up. 

This picture just shows the way the laundry room looked from December-April. Luckily we hadn't replace the flooring yet.

This is looking at the door to the garage at the end of the hallway. Laundry room and bathroom on the left. We're standing in family room to take the picture.

The next days were filled with crews of men coming in and out of the house. Clean-up and restoration crew, insurance adjustors/contractors, and plumbers. One of the tricky parts was the fact that Matthew was new and needed to nurse so often. It seemed as soon as I would sit down to feed him one of the workers would need to be let in the door or need my opinion on something downstairs. 

One thing we knew for sure, we needed to get a plumber to tell us what was going on. Until we found a resolution I felt like at any moment things would start to bubble up again. A plumber came and assessed the situation. His advice was one of two options- install a high-power toilet that flushes at a very high speed to move things along or jackhammer up the concrete in the basement to relay the plumbing. He recommended we start with the first option since he was quite sure that would work and the other was so costly. We researched toilet and decided that is the route we would go. 

As we tore out the rest of the bathroom in preparation to renovate we kept smelling something horrible. 

We found moisture in the right back corner of the tub. Trent decided it needed to be removed to investigate the odor and moisture and we found a whole area the clean up crew had missed.  It was moist and gross and we are so happy we found it before sealing that yuckiness in. They came back and cleaned it up and sprayed the biocidal on it to properly get it clean 

We also found this water that resulted from a high water table (welcome to Kentucky!) that needed taken care of. It is the hole in the concrete where the bathtub drain pipes went under the concrete.

More under the tub...

 What was left of the toilet and vanity area. The other side of this wall is where the laundry room is located. 

Do you see that tan bag? That is plugging the hole for the toilet. As we were proceeding with renovation preparations we noticed that some potty would back up out of this hole when we would flush the upstairs toilet. On Mother's Day we discovered a gross mess once again in this bathroom, Trent got called down to the hospital for a trauma at this moment, and I just didn't know what to think of this place. Thankfully, our angel neighbor, Jehoshaphat, came and helped me snake the line and provided excellent moral support. As he knelt there in that mess and prayed for our family I felt SO blessed to have Heavenly Father looking out for us by providing us with helping hands. 

It became quite obvious to us at this point that our problem was bigger than just installing a fancy toilet (since the toilet we were going to replace hadn't even been used in the weeks since the back up). Something was NOT right underneath the concrete and we needed to fix it once and for all so we could get on with life and think about something besides toilets and poop. I called So. Many. Plumbers trying to get answers and quotes. Even the city came out to take a look. Most people simply gave me the response of "call me when it happens again; we're not sure what's going on." Ummm...not okay with this girl to think of it happening again!

A friend gave us a referral for Rod Simmons, a local plumber, who they recommended. Finally we found someone who took the problem seriously and took the time to figure out the specifics of what was going on as he spent hours on the phone with us discussing different options and the science of sewer plumbing. He was a retired firefighter and picked up plumbing, electrical, and HVAC in his down time at the fire house. He told  us he enjoyed thinking about our predicament because he liked to solve problems and learn from the experience. Although initially he said he wasn't sure what was going on, he was sure of our problem after we called him in early June after returning home from our Utah trip. The first flush after our returning home resulted in the sixth back up. Since Rod had spent so much time working through our problem we called him late that night; he agreeed that the plumbing was too flat and that our best option was to break up the concrete, pull out pipes and re-lay new pipes at a proper fall.

We were so concerned about the cost of this project. We had set a budget for fixing some other essential problems in the house and really hoped that it wouldn't exceed that and eat into all our funds. Thankfully, the quote from Rod was much more reasonable than others had told us which was another big blessing. He said he would do the job if Trent did the hard labor since he was a one-man crew.

Because I have a very brave and knowledgeable husband he decided that he would plan on doing the concrete demolition and laying the new concrete. In the meantime the plumber confirmed our suspicion that this would be a very invasive project and we would be without facilities for an extended period of time. We decided it would be essential for the kids and I to find another place to stay and eventually planned a Utah trip during that time. We felt lucky that we got to vacate during all the chaos, dust, and lack of normal facilities. And until the repair happened we simply filled and drained the upstairs tub with each toilet flush to push a ton of water down the drain--and said lots of prayers!

Trent rented a concrete saw and a jackhammer. And like any good surgeon does before surgery, he marked the area to be dealt with before beginning the procedure. 

You betcha. We were NOT letting this ship sink without putting up a good fight. 

Dallin, Nathan's primary teacher and our friend from church, offered to come help with the process. He had already spent countless hours with Trent helping with demolition and renovation during April. How grateful we were for his help. Here he is pointing to the flat pipe they discovered just under the concrete. They found that the pipe ran immediately below the concrete slab for about 20 feet, which confirmed it was flat for that whole 20 feet!

Getting to the bottom of this problem...

Jehoshaphat and Dallin working on clearing the trench. Trent tells me that the work commenced around 9 AM, but by 2:45 PM they had only broken up about 10 feet out of the anticipated 30 feet. They pulverized the concrete and couldn't get it to come out in big chunks because of the concrete mesh the builders had used to pour it initially. He texted me his frustration. 1,700 miles away Heidi and I said a prayer and I told Trent about that prayer. He said that within a few minutes the concrete started coming out in chunks and they were looking at dirt rather than the next layer of pulverized concrete. They made good progress after that. We know Heavenly Father was helping us throughout this process.

The job proved to be difficult. Trent concluded that there is a reason concrete work is pricey to hire out. 

This is Trent breaking up the concrete in the laundry room.

Trent knew Nathan was dying to see the work he was missing while in Utah. Before the kids went to be we were able to Skype with Grammy's iPad and she captured this picture.
 

Pizza break to refuel!

38 man hours on that first day: They started at 9 AM and finished at 12:15 AM. Major problems were found. You can kind of tell in these pictures that the pipes ran immediately below the concrete slab (see below for the reason they found). The plumbing was complete flat with almost no fall whatsoever. It was no wonder things weren't flowing the right direction!

The sewer main had been laid on top of this footer that you see below. Just a few inches below this footer is another footer. Trent's plan of going under the footer was suddenly in jeopardy with the presence of the second footer. It became clear why the plumbing was flat. Trent said that after this point the pipe had a normal fall. The question of how to remedy the problem while maintaining the structural integrity of the house was suddenly a big hurdle. A neighbor boy, Brent, was helping Trent with the project. His dad popped in and Trent was muddling through this problem and fearing he would have to postpone the project for a week or so while he found a structural engineer who would come out and study the house to give us recommendations. This neighbor went home to his wife and shared the predicament. She reminded her husband that her friend was a structural engineer. They called her and she said she would come take a look and ended up making a house call and giving us a full assessment of the situation, all pro bono! 

In the end the decision was made to rent a coring drill and make a hole through one of the footers so the pipe could be properly laid. We were so grateful to have the go ahead of the engineer so we knew we were within the realms of safety!

If you look closely you can see water in the trench. Trent said each morning he would wake up and find a few inches of water he would have to vacuum out before continuing to dig. Remember that water in the hole under the bathroom tub? Apparently we live in a moist environment!

The exterior wall footer was found to be much smaller than anticipated and they were able to burrow under it to get the new sewer pipe to leave the house with enough fall.

 Ready for the plumber to do his work and lay the new pipe.

Trench on the left, work staging area on the right. 

Rod laid the new pipe with proper 1/4" per 1' fall. 

We ended up being VERY close to needing to tear up the driveway too and breathed a huge sigh of relief that we didn't have to! The plumber was within about 8 inches of needing to break up the driveway to attach to the existing line.

 

The plumber's work ended up taking 5 times as long as we'd planned. It was a relief when it was finally time to lay new concrete.

With the help of a neighborhood bucket brigade Trent got the concrete laid in no time. 

And since the kids weren't there to put in handprints Daddy added there initials to seal the deal. 

The time was drawing near for the kids and I to return to Kentucky and it was becoming increasingly clear that the house would not be ready. As in, we wouldn't have hot water running yet, etc. (not to mention the upstairs was torn apart for painting and re-flooring--but that's another post). We had some dear friends invite us to stay in their home upon our return until our house was habitable again. We stayed there for a week until the plumber had the hot water heater installed and things running again. 

As he was getting the last things hooked up after the final inspection Rod called Trent from the other room and asked him why water was dripping down from above. We were both horrified to think of what this might be! We were relieved to find it as just leaking from our water purification filter tank in the kitchen. It made this hole in the ceiling but we were grateful it wasn't anything terribly major. 

New pedestal for the hot water heater, new pipes, new drain down below to replace the old, nasty one! This wall drain eliminated the floor drain altogether, which is a huge relief!

And what a glorious day it was when this happened! 

The state inspector gave us the best gift of this little green sticker! :)