Master Bathroom Remodel Part 3: More Plumbing Nightmares!

Before we start, Matt wants to apologize for the upcoming lack of pictures. In the next few posts, Matt forgot to take some after pictures until after things had been re-sealed up (a hazard of being behind in posting). So you'll have to be content with just words for some things.

On to the nightmares!

I suppose we should be used to this house throwing nasty surprises at us, but this one still threw us for a loop. When Matt started cutting out the subfloor to move the shower line we found out that whoever had installed the bathroom previously had severely mangled the two floor joists that the shower drain ran through. Not only had they cut notches in the middle third of the span, those notches were over half the joist in thickness! This is a major no-no in construction that could have had serious impact on the house structure. Armed with this disturbing knowledge, we acted on a hunch and checked the toilet line. It also ran through a couple joists to get to the main stack, but we hoped that it had been done correctly. No such luck, as the pictures below show the previous plumber had cut all the way through the joists to run the 3.5" line through the 7.25" joists.

This is no longer a joist, it does nothing!

In this picture you can see Matt ruining his back trying to cut through a pipe under the floor

The pipe after we had pulled off the subfloor completely

After the pipe had been removed

Suffice to say that we were a little beside ourselves knowing our floor was basically ruined. While looking for a solution, Matt decided to get an early start on the demolition of the old pipes by snapping one of the copper elbows. Because of the way we had to cut the subfloor out, the part over the pipes coming out of the floor was unstable. Both of us kept stepping on the unstable portion and causing the whole board to tip up. Matt managed to clip the hot water line and water went everywhere.

The aftermath. Obviously we got no pictures during the water explosion.

Temporary press to connect so we could turn the water back on.

After that fiasco, we finally figured out we could sister the four ruined joists and get a code approved reinforcing plate for the large toilet drain line. Normally a 2x8 joist can only support a 2.5ish hole and our toilet drain has to be a 3.5" line, hence the need for the reinforcing plate. While installing the sistering joists, we did note that the cut joists had dropped by about a 1/4" and the notched joists had dropped by about 1/8". Luckily that is nothing too major and we didn't have to jack up the floor from underneath. However, it does show just how serious this issue was.

The sister joists around the notched boards.

Just waiting on the reinforcing plates!

We then needed to run the new drain lines for the sink and the shower. Because the shower drain was over 8ft, we knew we needed to run a re-vent line in addition to the drain line. A re-vent line is installed on long drain runs to ensure that the pipe cannot fill with water due to the normal drop of the pipe. The sink line was only 5ft (the maximum for the smaller sink drain pipe) so it didn't need a re-vent.

The new sink drain line

The shower drain line with its tee for the re-vent line through the shower wall.

Oh No!!!

 Due to the fact that the shower drain needed to meet up with the toilet drain line, we had a major issue trying to meet the plumbing slope codes and the codes dictating where joists can be cut. In the end we tried to reduce the plumbing slope to 1/8 per foot. Unfortunately the pipes could still not meet up correctly without causing the toilet line to have a dip down in it. Since that would create a location where waster water would pool, we had to go back to the drawing board for our drain lines......