We noticed water dripping from the dining room ceiling on the same day we had our water heater replaced. We discovered that the soil stack was leaking between the 2nd and 3rd floors. The 24 days total from discovery to the completion of restoration were very stressful...
Previous joy: water heater
Next joy: laundry drain
It was a weird coincidence that right after the plumbers left from the installation of our new water heater, we discovered water dripping from the dining room ceiling and trickling down the wall.
There was a spot on the wall inside the bathroom closet forming right above the leak in the dining room, so we removed the shelves and cut a small hole to see what was going on inside the wall. We found the soil stack, rusty but intact, with water streaming down its side from above. There was no obvious problem above in the 3rd-floor bathroom that we could see, but we turned off the water supply to both bathrooms anyway.
We called several plumbers and were able to get one of them to see our problem between other jobs. He didn't have the time to do much, but suggested that we make use of our home owner's insurance because he suspected this would be a big job. So we did call our insurance company, who recommended South Side Plumbing & Heating to provide an estimate.
From the time we first noticed the problem to when we had a plumber take a serious look at the problem, we stuffed towels in the hold in the bathroom closet to soak up the water that was still trickling down the stack.
Once the problem was diagnosed as a leaking soil stack between the 2nd-floor and 3rd-floor bathrooms, demolition of walls and removal of the soil stack commenced.
The old cast-iron stack was removed from mid-way up the 2nd-floor wall through the 3rd floor to the roof.
The entire dining room wall between the fireplace and the living room was wet and needed to be removed. The plumbers applied some kind of anti-mildew treatment and let the bare studs dry overnight.
It was a simple matter to replace the insulation and drywall in the bathroom closet.
While the wall in the 3rd-floor bathroom was open, it was very clear just how much dead space is between the roof and the wall there.
Once the bare dining room wall was dry, the insulation was replaced and new drywall and plaster coat were put up. There were still some rough edges around the new plaster at the time the restoration contractors left on this day.
I spent the morning removing nearly everything from the dining room to prepare for priming and painting. That meant that the living room, foyer, and kitchen were then full of those things. The remaining furniture in the dining room was moved to the center of the room and covered with plastic.
The 3rd-floor bathroom toilet had been removed earlier in order to get better access to the wall where the stack was. The toilet looked somewhat comical sitting in the middle of a room other than the bathroom...
Since the new color we chose for the dining room was reddish, the primer was pinkish. The primer had been applied on day 16, but we went on a trip the next day, interrupting the painting. That's why there's a gap of a week between the third and fourth restoration days. The new plaster wasn't dry enough on day 16 to prime, which is why it was still unprimed at the start of day 23.
The carpet in the bathroom had some nasty looking spots after the first day of plumbing work was finished.
It was quite a relief when all of the plumbing work, demolition, restoration, painting, and cleaning were finished. Even so, we still had a number of minor plumbing issues to have fixed at this point, including reinstalling the 3rd-floor toilet and fixing the leaking water line for our ice maker and the clogged wash basin drain.
Plumbing by:
South Side Plumbing & Heating
(recommended by our insurance company)
Restoration by:
Boyer & Pentek Home Improvements
(recommended by our insurance company)
Other joys:
ice maker
garage door opener
water heater
soil stack
laundry drain
The Joys of Home Ownership
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Last updated: 2005/10/11 23:31:01