If this were a movie...

We'd call this the climax. Alli with a pick-axe and a garden spade trying to do the impossible - find a 4" Cast iron waste pipe somewhere under our house. Finding only a 30 pound boulder 4' down from our dining room floor. How did we get here?


In the interest of the movie theme we'll "Tarantino" this story line... I'm going to start at the climax, at the worst, at our lowest moment - at the point where, after 2 days of digging, the shovel rang off of the first significant solid mass. Where in the span of 30 minutes we went from celebration to ritual suicide - when the reality sunk in that it wasn't the drain line it was a hoax - set in motion 106 years ago when an excavator decided to skip the loose fill in favor of landscaping boulders.






Act 1: Across the SEE

The project began with a need to tie our new bathroom waste line into our existing waste line. Because our only bathroom is at the back of our house, and our new bathroom is closer to the front of our house our plumber advised it's "best to avoid running shit backward just make it run forward again". Armed with this logic, we set about locating the existing waste pipes that run under our house and out to the city sewer lines at the street. For this we employed a plumber with a "see snake" which travels the length of your waste line video taping the path of your effluent while also charting a course along the floor of the house. With a modern divining rod, the plumber can find the exact depth and location of the see snake as it slides along.


Not a lovely image to watch but oddly fascinating as we now own a complete VHS recording of the insides of our pipes. Good news, no cave-ins, no roots, no real headaches to speak of. At the end of the day, i had an X mark on my dining room floor that said 4'10 down.


Act 2: Coal Miner's Daughter(s)

Saturday morning we brought in the help.... Neal and Leo, cut a hole in the floor, [again] and we started digging.

and digging


and digging


Act 3: Shawshank Redux


by the end of the day saturday we had a hole, big enough for a dog, but not deep enough to for the pipe. we closed for the night at about 3'6" depth.


Act 4: Easy like Sunday Morning

With the help gone, Alli and I settled in to the task of finishing the work. which now brought us to that sisyphean boulder... ultimately a moment of triumph.

With the boulder freed, we were renewed, and pushed on until,



finally, 2' to the side of where we thought it would be, we found the pipe!


almost like we were never there...