Excavation photos

[bobquasit]

Rather than do a long post, here's a link to some photos from the excavation today. Plus a couple of close-ups of bugs that happened to be near me; fair warning for entomophobes.

Hmm. I should explain some of it.

They put a trench box in after they dug the hole; that's a heavy steel box, designed to keep dirt from collapsing in on them when they're working in the hole.

They ended up digging through the basement floor as well, and replaced some of the pipe that they put in three years ago; the new pipe is blue. All of the cast iron is completely gone, except for the part that's leading up to the main drain from further back, of course. But that's completely fine.

They added an outdoor clean-out. That's the blue pipe you'll see sticking straight up; it's about 8'6" tall, if you're wondering, just tall enough to reach ground level. It allows the drain line further out to be cleaned more easily. With any luck we'll never need to use it, though.

Comments

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

So, does this mean that the basement might be a bit more useable? And does drainage seem to be improved?

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

Useable? Well...it won't be filled with sewage, presumably (we're going to have to scrub it down with a bleach and water solution sometime soon). I don't expect that we'll be having lunch or hanging out down there, though. After all, it IS an unfinished basement.

As for drainage, that wasn't really the problem; I don't think that the basement has EVER flooded because of rain, for example. The problem was that the roots sometimes blocked the main line, and all wastewater simply backed up and flooded the basement.

There's no chance of that happening now, though. It's all new pipe.

You know, I'm pretty sure that the pipe was broken long before we bought the place. Yet another reason to be angry at the previous owners.