We arrived home from our vacation at the beach to discover that another section of the cast iron drain pipes had rusted away, depositing only water on the basement floor this time (as opposed to the ground up food mixture from the last pipe adventure).

My dad hadn’t yet left for home when we discovered it, and reiterated that it is a simple thing to get a Sawsall, cut out the iron piping and replace it with PVC. “It’ll take about an hour,” he said. Coupling that with ‘s assertion that installing new pipe is a simple thing, and you can do it in small sections at a time, I decided not to try and patch, nor to call someone to take care of it, but to take care of it myself. After all, I had recently discovered I wasn’t going to have to fly to Mexico today, and instead would actually get a Labor day.

So, the game plan: I knew it would take more than the hour my dad estimates, because he is always, always wrong in his time estimations. So, multiply by a factor of 8. I can work on it through Sunday, and if I need to do some touch up, I have Monday. is in town, so I figured we could schedule something with her once I had an idea of how long this was going to take.

So far I have logged 17 hours, $250 in tools and materials, 4 trips to Lowes, and two close calls with out-of-control iron pipes. I estimate I’m about 75-85% done.

The act of sawing out pieces of cast iron caused leaks to spring up in other points along the line, so I couldn’t just do one or two manageable sections. It became a case of project-scope-creep.

Another thing is that the cast iron piping that is there is wrong. The pipe/house/Earth has settled over the years (or possibly, was always screwed up) in such a way that water had to run uphill in spots, which caused pooling, which caused the eventual rusting through I am currently combating. So, if I want it to be right (and less prone to clogs), it’s all or nothing. Or, at least, most or nothing.

On the plus side, I’ve gotten to listen to a lot of podcasts.