Plumbing suprises

[davo2310]

G'day fellas,

I thought I might start a thread to share with the plumbers and anyone interested, on some of the more interesting call outs. If there is any interest, throw in a pic ( if you have one ) and tell your story, if there isnt any interest, well Ive used up a few minutes while i was bored.

I'll start with one of my better ones.

After getting called out for a sewer choke on a lovely saturday afternoon. I began excavating the footpath ( as I thought it was the best place to start, seeing as how my eel cutter poked its head out the grass ) I found what you see in the pic. On the right you see see the top of the house line and to the left, the riser from the main. Apparently, 2 years before a certain authority, excavated and repaired the water main below, this was how kindly they backfilled after ripping the pipe out.

If you want others let me know, if not no worries.

[wonderplumb]

Yeah theyre not bad are they?
I dug up and replaced a 6" boundary trap once after the owner rang me for a quote and ended up being only marginally cheaper than the bloke who tried to clear it.
What happened was the bloke had his eel down there and snapped a cable when the cutter got caught on a large root at the connection to the boards main and told the owner " boundary traps had it blah blah".
Dug her up and found 4ft of cable and a nice shiny new root cutter.

Another good one was at Hurstville with a recently finished duplex on a strata plan, both houses drained to one point in one of the backyards.
Original plumber had gone awol, the place kept blocking up and surcharging through the FW.
Went to chevk it out, no gully, strange. Boundary trap area, no mica flap hmmm. Got a helio from the board, shot some levels, didnt meet soffit requirements, aaah, should have a reflux valve downstream of the boundary trap, with the BTS bought up etc. etc.
Put the camera down the FW, hit a blockage of some sort, located it and started digging. Found the, aah, "pit" they had made for the shaft and reflux valve which was made of stacked bricks with a formply lid buried about 200 under the grass. Dug it all up with the half bricks and broken tiles and rubbish etc, found the trap and the reflux valve, the shaft had simply been taped off at the top, they put in a turn up point for the mica flap, uncovered and full of dirt, they had run the service in from the second house in too low so it had a 5" jump up to join the shaft, kept digging to check on the main connection and found they had installed a second boundary trap after the reflux valve!! Found the connection and they had simply stuck the 4" pipe into the boards junction, packed it with newspaper and poured a bag of concrete over it! Ever seen a Syd Water inspector blow his stack? It was priceless. Turned out the builder had gone under and vanished while his plumber mate (they where cousins or something) was trading under a false licence number.
And Sydney Water thought it was a good idea to get rid of all their inspectors..............

[davo2310]

Yep got one of those main connections on file. was a side main, and what u see is the next door connection, dead set muppets.

The other one is my main client, this is what happened when public works do the job, and use pvc on a commercial kitchen

[dan76]

davo , looks like the plumber and sparkie came out of the same trade school in the first pic, cables zippy tied to a water pipe, how lazy can you get?


btw good thread

[davo2310]

Thanks Dan, heres a better one of the electrical under the same floor.

[juan]

Perhaps the sparkie who wired the cables to the pipe learnt his trade here.

66602

[wonderplumb]

One of the blokes I do some work for does a lot of the chokes and ground work for a couple of the major hospitals in the area, helped him for a whole day clearing a 6" DWV pipe from a manhole back towards the main building. Jet, camera, jet, camera etc till we found the problem. The 6" main drain had been crushed in the side during backfilling and was reduced to 2 inches at the bottom. Couldnt even get the camera through it. Where it is crushed is in the main entrance inside the main foyer. This particular hospital has had a major facelift recently aswell. Big boo boo!
Ill see if I can get a copy of the disk and grab the image.

[dan76]

davo, where to start ranting ???

funny thing is the fluoro is done right


think ill have to start an electricians thread lol

[scooter]

This (http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com.au/showpost.php?p=65972&postcount=11)was my bit of plumbing modification a few years back... :rolleyes:

[joe greiner]

Plumber (original builder - 1976) found a joist in the way of his vent pipe. Cut the joist of course. I bought the house in late 2003, and added timber side straps in early 2005.

Joe

[davo2310]

Well Dan, I dont think it needs sayin mate, a picture tells a thousand words hey.
As for Scooter, well I hope you met up with him and got him rotten.
Joe, well that looks like its nice and structual. sure the plumbing wasnt in first?.



One of my builders took over a new house all roughed in and at lock up, I quoted 2 prices, 1 to connect up off existing which i stated wasnt guaranteed. and another 2 rip the lot out and start again. Didnt have my camera for that one. this job had a rsj about 12mts, one end was on the brickwork about 2.5mts from the ground, the other end....... was in the dirt on a rock, but anyway I found another pic, cause we cant forget the good old fencers.

This fence was up for a couple of years that I can remember before and blockage started, and it was the GM's house.

[wonderplumb]

oh yeah, lets not forget the fencers and the ever trust worthy landscapers!!

We done a major reno at a place at vaucluse last year, stuck a temp toilet in an ensuite, connected to the main etc and got a phone call the next morning that there was crap running down the side path and across the foot path. The labourer had driven a star picket through the sewer near the front of the place and the good old landscapers had some how managed to cut a junction into the sewer at the side of the house, bring up a riser and concrete the path with a 4" hardi channel drain across it, from where the shyte was flowing.

I really must have my camera with me more often at work!

Today it took me and another bloke 5hrs to replace an 80L HWS with a 50L job, the kitchen area in this particular office space had been built around the heater, which meant removing half the kitchen to get it out.

[scooter]

As for Scooter, well I hope you met up with him and got him rotten.


Nah, haven't seen him since. Plenty of good karma going his way, though. :)

[joe greiner]

Joe, well that looks like its nice and structual. sure the plumbing wasnt in first

Neighbours reported the house was pre-fabricated boxes, so the plumbing hookup came later. Even stick-built it'd be difficult to place plumbing with the structure absent.

Joe

[SilentButDeadly]

I used to work for a certain east coast water authority and saw some marvelous plumbing whilst I was there.....but the best bit of plumbing modification I ever saw was an excerpt from a sewer inspection video taken in a 600mm main under the CBD.

As the camera moved upstream (and uphill) the viewer first noticed a problem in the floor of the pipe where ther was a small but noticeable uplifted crack that had significant calcification around it.....only a metre or so further on, a half inch rod protruded through the pipe at right angles in the bottom qtr of the pipe.....another metre further and there was another one....and the camera unit couldn't get past.

A change of camera unit and another look found there was something like twelve to fifteen rods punched through this pipe over a few tens of metres. And the pipe was for the most part blocked by them, the crud they'd collected and the 'calcification' around the rods....

Turned out that the 'rods' were actually rock anchors drilled into the sandstone to anchor the foundations of a new high rise and the 'calcification' was the grout they use to pack the holes after fitting the anchors....most of which went down the sewer.

Fortunately, the problem was identified whilst the multi floor hise rise was still at the foundation level......so the replacement of the pipe and the re-anchoring of the foundations only cost hundreds of thousands of dollars....

[davo2310]

I had aussie post call me one night, had a blockage in one of there depots, rolled up, building site next door..uhuh, sewer main man hole sticking up 1.5mts in this buliding site...ok, found man hole before it in the street, pulled it up.....yeah ok, call the waterboard, inspector met me out there, showed him the manhole and I said, I'll leave the rest to you.. Im not sure what happened, but they either smashed it and filled it with the concrete pour or just smashed it, either way I was happy to be out of there'


Thats a nice one silent, ive seen the anchor cables through the mains.
Wonderplumb, how many more will you see, if its not built in, its built to fit a heater designed 10 years ago, now u cant fit anything in.And these days mate, your camera is in one way or another, your main tool.

Keep em comin guys

Davo

[Bluegum]

Luckily enough as an earthmover I haven't pulled anything out of the ground I wasn't supposed to (yet). Three years back our local council decided that it was time to up grade our sewer mains from a shared main system to individual properties having their own sewer pipes to the main.

The counciil plumbers thought there was a blockage between us and the property next door. Instaed of asking us if there were any issuse with the system they smashed the pipes open with their mad micks the decided to put an eel down there. This was 24hrs prior to the new hook up and they assured us that all sewer would continue to be flushed away.

Best thing was the look on their faces when they turned up for work the next day to discover the trences filled with the things they were confident would continue to floww through the system.