What home improvement work did you do today?

Took down a big ole shelf and mounted some mirrors and tv so I can watch myself playing with myself.
Framing and drywall will get down eventually but there are bigger fish to fry currently

 

We keep talking about getting rid of our Airdyne and getting the Concept2 bike.

 

Just depends on what kinda workout you want. I've been using this Echelon bike with Peleton's app and doing some spin classes. A good low impact way to sweat your balls off.

 

Any plumbers out there? Our unfinished basement has a shower drain and toilet waste roughed in and I’m assuming they both go back to the wall in the picture. I have no idea if I need a pump or if my sewer line is still below my basement grade? Is there any easy way to tell? I obviously wanna finish this into a bathroom eventually. The pipes were empty when I put the caps on but I’m not sure where to go from here as a homeowner besides straight to a plumber or contractor. Any words of advice?

 

Look for a sump somewhere nearby. Unless you’ve got a daylight basement, my bet is sewer is higher than the basement floor level. A sump in the floor is telltale and would be for dropping the sewage ejector pump into.

I don’t see a vent line unless it’s in the concrete wall, but that is both rare and too far away for code. You sure that smaller pipe is for a shower and not the vent for the toilet?

It’s hard to really assess without knowing the layout of your house, where other fixtures are upstairs, and where your sewer/septic connection is located.

 

There is no sump unless it’s buried in the concrete and plugged in secretly. I was told that our sewage (no septic here) may go through our backyard to the next street over. There is no waste line going to the front of the house so that makes sense to me.
There is a vent (shower drain style) in the gym on the concrete floor (circled in red) and also a vent line (I’m guessing) off to the side of the stairs wall

 

Advise...
You're home looks like a fairly recent build. Might be a good idea to contact CDA Building & Planning dept & get a copy of your building plan. They have them available for a nominal fee. You can also request copies of all of your required building inspections. If there is a record of a basement plumbing inspection... that will show up.
https://cdaid.org/planning

the plan will show all plumbing fixtures. it should also show grade heights for wet utilities like sewers.
you can also hire someone send a camera down those pipes. The camera is equipped a toner that will give exact location as it travels + depths. it can also scope the pipe all the way to the main if it IS connected.
around here a typical camera scope with a video is around $300.

best of luck
..Slayer

 

Wow didn’t know any of that. I appreciate it. It is a build from 1972 though so it ain’t all that ‘recent’ I will check into that as it would give me firm answers instead of guesswork

 

well..
it didn't take much to get a plan in '72.
I started my career in home building a couple years after that.

you might get lucky with a plan copy. .. inspection copies maybe not

best of luck

 

lol... just PM’d with similar suggestions. ‘72 in Coeur d’ Alene - you might been lucky if they pulled a permit at all. My comments in the PM about dirty vents and my prior comment on vent distance here both aren’t as valid knowing the age of the house... there’s a lot you could get away with then that isn’t allowed now.

For sure I’d get it scoped.

 

I have a situation kinda close to yours my house is 1950 and they used to have a finished basement with a full bath. At some point the basement had water issues (forced now) and the finished all was tore out. So right now I have shower drain (concrete pan) toilet hole and sink drain. I have no clue if they still work? So I had a plumber over and asked how do I know it works? His answer “take to cap off your clean out and put a hose in the toilet run water and watch outside for flow” he was extremely confident it would work. Pretty simple way to possibly test?

 

Weird so like watch for a puddle in the yard?

 

How does that work? We are still using the 1yr echelon subscription that came with our ex4s from Costco. Might switch to the peleton app after after its up

 

Do you have a clean out outside for your sewer? Or do you have a septic?

I have a clean out which looks like this. This is what it’s like in town/in my area of the country. If u have this in your yard just unscrew it and watch for water to flow. Again that’s how mine is set up.

 

No, code requires a cleanout where a line exits the building (always assuming your place was built to code). Pulling that cleanout cap and watching/listening for water flowing would be a tell-tale sign that it is connected. But you could also be pouring water into nothing...or filling up a capped off pipe until it backflows on you and you’ve got a mess to clean up.

My money is on that cleanout you see sticking out of the concrete wall being the main waste exiting the building, and anything under slab is not tied into that (you said in your PM that the pipes were only covered with cardboard until a short time ago when you actually capped them). Looking at the window to the right of it in the last picture (and assuming that window is in one of those sunken pits), that puts it at about the elevation that you would typically run a drain line out.

As for the drain you have in your gym floor, that may just be an area drain in case of water intrusion, and it may simply run to a french drain. I have three of those in my basement that we routed out to daylight in the opposite direction of the main house plumbing, just in case we had a water problem.

Does your water heater blow-off line just dump to the floor?

 

I have two of those. One from the pipe in the wall by the location of it I’m guessing. And then one on the adjacent wall in the side yard.

 

I think peloton does it better. I use a wahoo cadence sensor and my Apple Watch and they both show up on the app when I workout. I have the same bike from Costco too

 

makes me curious where the hell the other ends of those pipes would be though.
Yes my water heater just dumps to the floor which is why I’m guessing that floor drain is there.

 

You should run a sewer line too for the rv! My man cave when the family drives me nuts!

 

Cool! I've got a tv in the spare bedroom that the bike stays in, i was wondering if i could just use the cadence and resistance on the bike screen and post up the peleton class on the tv. I couldn't really find a "free ride" option on the eschelon bike.
some time's i just throw a tv show or movie on and pump up the resistance as i go, i had to throw a class on to be able to see the cadence and resistance.

 

Picture of new enterance light installed and matching light that will be over the breakfast table after furniture is moved back in. I had to add a box for the entrance light since the old light was apparently just screwed into the drywall. Updated hall bathroom picture with mirrors and towel bars installed.

 

Laid down another six rolls of sod and began the fire pit.

 

Only have to make 6 more of these...lol. MDF and dowels. $20 for all the materials versus $30 for one set off Amazon. Have enough mats for my impacts, 1/2", 3/8", 1/4", and torx.

 

Finished the pit today. A few more rolls of sod to match it up with the sod I put in last year, then I'll till the yard and seed it.

 

We had an old ugly mantle that turned out to be rough sawn old cypress that someone had stained. So I took it down and started planing and sanding, sadly I didn't take any before pics. Here are the fennels sitting on the mantle after I worked it over.
Going with a water based poly clear.
I routed the back of it for some LED lighting.

 

Is that going to be your compound for the zombies outbreak?

 

New flooring for the living room. CaliBamboo vinyl planks. Super happy with the product and the finished job. Area rugs have been ordered but are another week out.

Before



During, unfortunately the original 1865 flooring doesn't look as good as the pictures. It's full of wood filler, bent nails, cracks big enough to fit fingers, and so dry it's nearly entirely splinters lol.




After