When we first took possession of the property, we had the drain pipes in the south/west wing replaced. We now know we really should have had the entire main sewer line done at the same time, as when we first started working on getting a handle on things under the house a few months back, we discovered a leak where the new sewer pipe section joins up with the old line.
Since things were under “warranty,” I called Rescue Rooter and they said they would send someone out. Then things got complicated, as they had recently sent someone out to quote us on replacing a broken exterior tap head. They quoted that project out at over a thousand dollars so we said “uh no thanks,” and apparently they were confused about that quote and the drain issue, so it took a few weeks for them to actually come out and look at our drain pipe.
Turns out the old section of pipe was cracked from where the new pipe joined it to where it makes a ninety degree turn to run through the north wing of the house and out to the septic. Naturally, this section wasn’t covered by the warranty, as of course it wasn’t cracked as a result of the work they did last summer. And of course the guy who came out undid the fitting between the two, and only then determined how dire things were, and that the now-broken pipe couldn’t be put back in place, and I was now basically a hostage to them. Still, did I grumble? No. They quoted me a not-terrible-yet-still-pretty-steep price, and he then proceeded to put a new section of four-inch pipe in place. And of course the guest room and kitchen smelled awful for the rest of the day.
That wasn’t the only troublesome bit of plumbing to deal with lately. A few weeks back, I was sitting at my office desk working when I heard a very loud noise. Now this was just after getting the furnace stuff sorted, so my immediate thought was that something bad had just happened, until I remembered that we have diesel and diesel does not tend to go ‘boom.’ Outside I went towards the side gate, and low and behold, water was gushing out of the pool equipment.
Here’s a shot of the equipment. Directly below the electrical box there is a black section of pipe, and you can just make out a small relief tap on the left side. Well, that tap had blown out of the pipe and hit the fence across the way, making the loud noise. I quickly opened up the electrical panel and threw the breakers, then made a call to Genie (our helpful pool people), who sent a tech to try to sort out what was going on.
When the tech arrived, he diagnosed a pressure buildup and thought he might not have enough water in the pool (which wasn’t the case), so he redid that section of the plumbing. I suggested maybe it was a blockage somewhere in the plumbing, but he didn’t think that would cause the issue.
Well things were ok for the next week, and then one day, everything exploded again, only this time we had our own Old Faithful going off since the new tap had been mounted at an upward angle. So to be safe and not standing in water when shutting things down, I went into the building behind the equipment and flipped the main electrical circuit for that area of the house. Then I made another call to Genie and they sent the tech back out.
And wouldn’t you know it–a few days later, there was water leaking from the base of the pump. Not one to want things exploding a third time, I shut the system down and called the tech back out.
He still thought the issue was with our pool or possibly our pump, so this time he redid the plumbing and left off the tap. Since in both explosive cases I had noticed a tiny amount of water leaking from the pump a few hours before the actual explosion, we agreed I’d keep my eye on things.
This time he went through the whole system and finally found the issue–the solar valve, the ONE portion of the pool hardware we have not replaced in the last year, had failed. If you check the above images you’ll see it immediately below the patch of exposed plywood (which is where the electrical panel used to be and is now, as of this writing, finally stuccoed and painted, but more on that later). Here are some shots of it after it was pulled out of the setup:
We have a very nice new valve in place and things have stopped exploding–for now.