Plumbing - Trials and Tribulations

Our sewage line has had a difficult week to say the least.  After the plumbers came on Tuesday to install the PVC, it looked beautiful.  Ryan laid gravel on either side of the pipe the whole way to the street.  The plumbing inspector came on Wednesday and thought we had done a great job and gave us the OK to keep moving forward.  I never thought our sewage line would excite me, but after seeing it lie so nicely in our trench we hand dug ourselves, I became very attached to my new line.  Unfortunately, that changed very quickly.  Thursday morning we planned to back fill the trench with dirt, but our plans changed when we arrived at the house to see our beautiful PVC pipe floating on top of water.  The rain from the night before had filled up the hole in the back yard, flowed under the house into the basement trench, and then filled up in the lowest point, which happened to be the 10ft trench outside.  The pipe was capped, which caused it to act like a balloon and rise to the top.  This was the beginning of a very long day!

Steve brought his mini bulldozer to dig the 10ft trench to the street, we had to hide the keys from Michael!!

The sewage pipe was laid through the basement, along the old garage (shown here) and to the street

The pipe topped with gravel in the basement

Ryan and Lindsay admiring their hard work!

 our beautiful sewage line at the end of Tuesday!

Thursday morning at 8am....

It's too painful to write commentary, the pictures say it all

 

 

 

Once Steve, our builder, arrived it took about 4 hours to repair the damage.  Ryan shoveled out the mud and gravel (that was a pretty terrible job), we made sure the pipe once again had the correct slope, added new gravel, and topped it off with dirt.  It was a very painful process, but it wasn't the end of the world (I can say that now).  After the trench was back filled with gravel and dirt, we worked on getting the footers ready for the concrete to be poured on Friday.

Ryan's new buddy, a 5ft black snake!

The gravel shooter truck came and shot gravel in the back hole to prepare for the concrete to be poured

We went through two concrete trucks to complete the job

Ryan's working on leveling out the concrete in the footer for the addition

The concrete pump tubing was able to stretch the length of the house!

Steve, our builder, pumping concrete into the footer for the new garage

These are the controls the concrete pump operator used from his belt to control the whole operation!

Michael came home early from work to get in on the action

Ryan working on leveling the concrete for the footers in the 90 degree heat