The Little Dutch Boy

I had suspected for a while now that one of the drain pipes in the crawl space was leaking. Back in the summer when I redid the front of the house and uncovered the crawlspace vents there, I noted a bit of an off odour near the front door, and despite my best efforts to do nothing at all about it, the odour did not dissipate on its own. I also started to have trouble with flies gathering around the front door, which made it very inconvenient to get my mail.

So eventually I resigned myself to calling a plumber. No doubt I was physically and intellectually capable of performing the work myself, but I was rather unwilling to crawl down through the mud to reach the source of the problem. Thus, it made all the sense in the world to pay someone else to suffer that indignity.

The plumber was able to show me that, indeed, the drain pipe that connected the kitchen and laundry drains had a decent sized hole in it, no doubt caused by the improper slope (the leak was at the low point of a sag in the pipe) combined with a poor choice of materials (galvanized steel... really?) and the fact that the water softener (which I removed long ago) had been discharging its brine down that drain.

Anyway, the plumber and his assistant were able to remove the offending pipes and replace them with shiny new ABS with about 6 hours of labour from the both of them. The total bill, including materials and taxes, was $2800, which is a fair chunk, but a price I was willing to pay.

I didn't opt to pay for their offer of soil remediation, though, where they would attempt to clean up the wet soil in the crawl space by some method I wasn't interested in hearing anything about. For one thing, the leaking water was only kitchen/laundry water; basic grey water that is perhaps the least offensive thing one can find inside a drain pipe. For another, the crawl space is still, despite my best efforts, subject to occasional flooding in the winter, so it would make no difference if they cleaned up the wet soil now, as the sum total of all the dirt down there would likely soon be soaked anyway. And third, it's literally just wet dirt. I couldn't care less about it being down there. It will dry in due time, then get wet again, and then dry out once more.

With that offer dismissed, I did at least accept their proposal to douse the area in pine sol, at no extra charge. I figured there would be no downside to this option.

That is, at least, until the pine sol fumes seeped into the house. That stuff has a very, very powerful aroma. I think I would have preferred the slightly musty soil smell.

Thankfully the smell has mostly faded now, and we're pretty much back to normal again. The plumber did advise that some other pipes may be suffering a bit of corrosion, so I'll be keeping an eye on the situation and making plans to get a full replacement done at some point in the future.

But for now, the job is done.