Oakum Joints & Geneal Questions

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HudsonN

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Long story short my friend bought a cabin and he asked me to do the plumbing in it. I graduated from a technical highschool and studied plumbing but that was years ago and my career drifted in other directions. Point being at one point i knew this stuff but it's pretty rusty now.

Here's the scope of what i'm doing; one piece shower tub, new shower mixer valve, new vanity and toilet and the associated supply and waste plumbing to each.

His main DWV stack is copper. Where it drops into the builder sewer in the basement the copper goes into a cast iron pipe. I believe it's the old oakum and lead type joint but i could be wrong.

In his downstairs bathroom he wants to make the bathroom bigger. The main stack is run through the wall he wants to pull back meaning i need to move the stack. My main concern is that one cast iron sanitary tee on the building sewer with the oakum joint. I DO NOT want to break that. What would be the best way to get the copper out of it so i can re-plumb the entire DWV system up to that point in PVC and then join into that? I was reading somewhere about older cast iron and newer cast iron having two different sizes and modern PVC not fitting into it correctly. How can i see if that's the case and what's the best way to attach a PVC stack into a cast iron sewer pipe?

In the first picture below that's the main floor bathroom. The one i'm redoing. You can see the main stack on the left come up from the basement and then go up to the second floor. He wants to pull that wall back about two feet to make the bathroom bigger thus moving the stack two feet closer, etc. The upstairs is getting gutted too so moving pipes is no issue.

Thanks!

Picture related. I took them at night so they're not good quality. I'll get better ones later today.





 
Last edited:
To remove the lead, drill it out.
You might have to cut the copper off close to the hub. leave enough to grab a hold of with some pliers.
Or cut it close to hub then slice through the copper vertically and peel it out then dig out the lead.

I have a thread showing how to remove lead from closet flange.

Then just use lead wool & oakum and repack it. You don't need to melt the lead like they originally did.

Another thread showing how to split and peel out copper from a fitting,
similar to what You can do to remove copper from hub
 
Last edited:
To remove the lead, drill it out.
You might have to cut the copper off close to the hub. leave enough to grab a hold of with some pliers.
Or cut it close to hub then slice through the copper vertically and peel it out then dig out the lead.

I have a thread showing how to remove lead from closet flange.

Then just use lead wool & oakum and repack it. You don't need to melt the lead like they originally did.

Another thread showing how to split and peel out copper from a fitting,
similar to what You can do to remove copper from hub

Thank you. Just read through them and am now a little more comfortable drilling them out and replacing them. Seems crazy that packing oakum and then topping it with lead wool is an airtight seal that won't leak/smell.

Probably going to be asking you guys a lot of questions.

NICE! :eek:

Hope you fix that?

There's so much wrong in that picture i'm not really sure what exactly you're referencing. :D

He pulled the ceiling down revealing the plumbing for the upstairs bathroom and sent me this video (see youtube link). The entire plumbing system is shoddy. I went over there last night and pretty much told him to do it the right way he needs to pull all of the copper out and start from the building sewer and literally work all the way back up through the roof replacing everything.

One of my good buddies that continued plumbing out of highschool is swinging over tomorrow to help me give it a good once over and point me in the right direction before i start.

It's starting to come back to me but i'm still rusty on some things. Been reading about wet venting, distance a shower p-trap can be from where the wet vent is, DFUs, etc.

Here's the video link.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KCh-ELgkiE[/ame]
 
The PVC drain:eek:

What is the 3" copper above the tee, a vent or more fixtures above?
 

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