A Tale of our Plumbing Part 2

So we were able to get a plumber out to the house, and after two visits, the leaks in the walls and under the sink have been fixed! Unfortunately, not only was the plumber not able to fix the backing up issue, but our wonderful home warranty decided not to cover the cost. Turns out, not only did the work Matt do around the leaky pipes count as tampering, but it was also a "pre-existing condition" and therefore not covered. After some research online, we found the warranty is unlikely to cover anything ever and has many dissatisfied customers. Basically, unless we have a fully documented case of something breaking and the cause cannot be tied to us in any way, the warranty will not cover the fix. Shows us for letting the seller pick the warranty company (long story). For those who might buy a home soon, never use Home Security of America as your home warranty company.

The plumber did find out that the sink vent pipe did not go up to the roof as it should, but instead dead ended somewhere in the wall. His snake ended up snagging some insulation when he checked it out. So now we have a Studor Valve, or an Air Admittance Valve, under our sink. It's like a one way valve for air triggered by the vacuum in the pipes. The old vent line is still connected in the system so we now have double protection on negative pressure in our pipes.

Our new vent

Unfortunately, like we mentioned earlier, this did not fix the backing up of our sink that first started this mess. So, after some advice from the plumber, Matt made an emergency trip to Lowes, picked up some pipe and fittings, and then replaced the whole line to the main drain line.

Matt just lopped off the whole 18' line

While he was replacing the pipe, he used the opportunity to fix some minor routing issues that he wasn't able to when he fixed the slope of the line. He also added a much better fitting for the eventual washer move. While cutting out the old pipe, we finally did find the cause of all of our trouble: a huge build up of nasty, greasy, spongy material crammed in the pipes. We would put pictures up, but Matt thinks there are laws against that level of disturbing imagery. Plus, without the smell...shudder...you don't get the full effect. We did see, however, that the snaking attempts had just put small holes in the enormous mass and confirmed what the plumber thought about the plug.

Now we have a line to add our washer to when we move it later

So beautiful...

Now the sink works wonderfully well, and the first major issue of our new house is fixed! Now onto the other 99 issues.........