Hey everyone,
I recently bought an older (1961) home. The garage, which used to house the laundry, was turned into a living room. They brought the floor up to the level of the rest of the house. They then added another room off of the living room, to act as a laundry/utility room, down on slab level with the carport out back. Our project has been to integrate this utility room as an actual part of the house (bringing up floor, adding electrical, etc.). I am now to the plumbing stage of the project and I'm trying to understand my options per the UPC. I'm hoping to get some advice on the various options for my situation and help selecting the best one.
The picture here is the existing washing machine drain/vent system. The washing machine trap/standpipe are old galvanized. The drain currently backs up when we attempt to do laundry. Not sure if this is a clog issue or a pipe diameter issue. I've tried to snake the trap and the vent pipe from above with no luck at clearing anything or resolving the issue. The washing machine can run through almost all of its cycle, but the pipe overflows when the machine empties at the end, unless you stand there opening/closing the machine to stop/restart the drainage flow. The drain/vent system are cast iron.
As you can see in that picture, the laundry/drain vent are inside a brick wall. This drain pipe goes down into the slab under the living room as you can see here:
then turns 90 deg to travel underneath the living room. This picture shows the very difficult to access crawl space atop the slab and under the living room.
You can see the new PEX supply lines I ran to replace the old galvanized supply pipes you'll see in the next picture below. From there, it enters the main crawlspace under the majority of the house and connect to the main drain. Where the cast iron drain exits the slab and enters the crawlspace is pictured here:
On the opposite side of this brick wall is the utility room the prior owners added. We want to add a utility sink in this utility room. If looking at the brick wall, the new fixture will be located on the left side of the room, about 10 ft down from this wall. I need to resolve my washing machine overflow issue and add in a new drain/vent for the laundry sink.
To make it just a bit weirder, the old owners also built an unfinished addition on top of the carport/utility room. Inside this addition is a portion of the old roof of the house. The vent pipe seen in the pictures above actually comes out into this new room. We plan on finishing the addition eventually, so I'm assuming this vent will need to be extended out the new roof. There is another vent pipe that comes out the old roof as well that I suspect is to the kitchen sink drain system. Could these be causing some of my drainage flow issues? The kitchen sink has drained pretty slowly since we got the house as well. The photos of where these exit the old roof are below:
Since I've built the floor up in the utility room to house level, there is space below the floor to run drains. The walls within the utility room are wooden stud walls, so I suspect I can run new drainage lines either through the walls or under the floors as needed. I'm familiar with the 1/4 inch per ft slope rule. I'm trying to figure out my best options for going through the brick wall to tie in the new drain for the sink and replacing the 1.5" laundry drain/trap as needed, but I want to ensure I do a job that won't need to be re-done for the foreseeable future. Any advice you can provide is much appreciated. The supply lines to the sink will be PEX coming from a manifold in the same area as the laundry drain, but not pictured (you can see where the red & blue PEX lines are ran to service the washing machine).
I recently bought an older (1961) home. The garage, which used to house the laundry, was turned into a living room. They brought the floor up to the level of the rest of the house. They then added another room off of the living room, to act as a laundry/utility room, down on slab level with the carport out back. Our project has been to integrate this utility room as an actual part of the house (bringing up floor, adding electrical, etc.). I am now to the plumbing stage of the project and I'm trying to understand my options per the UPC. I'm hoping to get some advice on the various options for my situation and help selecting the best one.
The picture here is the existing washing machine drain/vent system. The washing machine trap/standpipe are old galvanized. The drain currently backs up when we attempt to do laundry. Not sure if this is a clog issue or a pipe diameter issue. I've tried to snake the trap and the vent pipe from above with no luck at clearing anything or resolving the issue. The washing machine can run through almost all of its cycle, but the pipe overflows when the machine empties at the end, unless you stand there opening/closing the machine to stop/restart the drainage flow. The drain/vent system are cast iron.
As you can see in that picture, the laundry/drain vent are inside a brick wall. This drain pipe goes down into the slab under the living room as you can see here:
then turns 90 deg to travel underneath the living room. This picture shows the very difficult to access crawl space atop the slab and under the living room.
You can see the new PEX supply lines I ran to replace the old galvanized supply pipes you'll see in the next picture below. From there, it enters the main crawlspace under the majority of the house and connect to the main drain. Where the cast iron drain exits the slab and enters the crawlspace is pictured here:
On the opposite side of this brick wall is the utility room the prior owners added. We want to add a utility sink in this utility room. If looking at the brick wall, the new fixture will be located on the left side of the room, about 10 ft down from this wall. I need to resolve my washing machine overflow issue and add in a new drain/vent for the laundry sink.
To make it just a bit weirder, the old owners also built an unfinished addition on top of the carport/utility room. Inside this addition is a portion of the old roof of the house. The vent pipe seen in the pictures above actually comes out into this new room. We plan on finishing the addition eventually, so I'm assuming this vent will need to be extended out the new roof. There is another vent pipe that comes out the old roof as well that I suspect is to the kitchen sink drain system. Could these be causing some of my drainage flow issues? The kitchen sink has drained pretty slowly since we got the house as well. The photos of where these exit the old roof are below:
Since I've built the floor up in the utility room to house level, there is space below the floor to run drains. The walls within the utility room are wooden stud walls, so I suspect I can run new drainage lines either through the walls or under the floors as needed. I'm familiar with the 1/4 inch per ft slope rule. I'm trying to figure out my best options for going through the brick wall to tie in the new drain for the sink and replacing the 1.5" laundry drain/trap as needed, but I want to ensure I do a job that won't need to be re-done for the foreseeable future. Any advice you can provide is much appreciated. The supply lines to the sink will be PEX coming from a manifold in the same area as the laundry drain, but not pictured (you can see where the red & blue PEX lines are ran to service the washing machine).
