Closet bend leaking in basement

Plumbing Forums

Help Support Plumbing Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

JustSomeDude

New Member
Joined
Jul 3, 2016
Messages
4
Reaction score
0
Location
,
Hi there, first post here. I have a downstairs toilet that was having random issues with backing up. Had a plumber we know come take a look and put an auger down it to loosen anything that might have been stuck (I have two little boys and a stuck Duplo could certainly have been the culprit).

Our pipes are all very old. I think the twisting action of the auger in the closet bend might have scratched it up from the inside, because now it has a very slow drip from a few long scratches I can see on the outside of the pipe. A little backstory: my wife recently painted the ceiling white in that room of our basement, including the drain stack and that closet bend. After the "augering", there were a few paint chips on the floor, and the paint is scuffed a bit in a radial pattern around the pipe. The water seems to be coming from these scuffs.

What am I looking at here? Do I need to replace the closet bend? How much should I expect that to cost? Alternatively, is there some kind of wrap that I could put around it to seal it, or any other DIY solution? Thanks in advance!
 
Last edited:
With out pictures it's hard to tell but a closet auger should not have broken your pipe unless it was very very brittle. If anything it's leaking from the wax seal sometimes when it clogs like that the wax is not supposed to be under pressure and could have effected it
 
Yeah, the pipe definitely could have been very brittle. Does that necessarily mean it might be made of lead? Or is it likely to be lead because of the age of the house? I wouldn't mind replacing it with PVC, especially if there's no other solution. How much would it cost me to have a plumber do this, generally? (Since I would have no idea what I'm doing, and I don't want to mess around with my sewage plumbing)
 
Depends on how old house is if you have lead. What's the age of the house? Is there any way to get pictures?
 
The house was built in the late 1930s, is that generally old enough to have been built with lead pipes? I wasn't under the impression that it was.

I'm having issues with my internet, so I'm replying on my phone and can't seem to upload photos from the mobile site. Will upload a few when the internet's fixed.

At this point I'm considering replacing the bend myself if I can replace with cast iron or PVC or something without too much of a headache or mess.
 
Photo%20Jul%2004%2C%2010%2005%2043%20AM.jpg


Photo%20Jul%2004%2C%2010%2005%2043%20AM.jpg

Ok, hopefully these show up all right. The way this is situated, does this look like something I can do myself, having never done this before, or does it look like something a professional should handle?
 
Last edited:
Back
Top