I'm in NY where I know I need the house trap by code and I am not looking to remove it and replace it with a straight pipe. This is a house that I a bought fairly recently and am working on gradually.

I have a cesspool and the cast-iron pipe on the cesspool side of the CI house trap (in my basement) cracked. I was able to pull it apart and slip a rubber coupler over it to hold it together for now, but I need to change out the whole thing before I run new plumbing throughout the house anyway. Currently it's vented with the wrong diameter copper pipe on the wrong side of the trap and the connection into the CI trap is PVC and wrapped in duct tape, it's not leaking so I haven't peeled it off to see what's underneath it yet. I want to reroute the pipe anyway as it cuts across the corner of the basement on a 45 degree angle and I want to route it to follow the outside wall. To do this I was figuring that I'd make a clean cut just past the break, use a clamping coupler to attach a 4" PVC street 45 and then make up a house trap out of PVC, I got the 4" PVC return bend yesterday and am trying to figure out which fittings I need to use to make the trap, what I've seen online use what appear to be a long turn WYE with an 1/8 bend. I can do that, but it seems like I'll end up with a much deeper trap than the original cast-iron, is also seems it would be difficult to snake through the WYE. Using two sanitary tee street fittings would add less depth to the trap, would that be a better way? I'm wondering it would just be easier to get a new cast-iron house trap with the vent fitting and everything built into it, use a cast-iron 45 and a short section of cast-iron pipe, and then just connect up the PVC to that, but I've never dealt with cast-iron, the PVC I'm used to and comfortable with. I'm also debating if I should dig up the line in the yard as I know that the cesspool was redone a few years back, and for all I know there is new PVC tied into the CI right on the other side of the foundation and maybe I'd be better off replacing it all with PVC...

hard to say without seeing the setup.
but, let me make a guess.
you have a return bend so you need a street 90 for one end and a street sanitary tee for the other. then put an end cleanout into the top of the san tee.

The house traps around the KC MO area have clean outs on both sides. The old cast iron ones had a sanitary T, return bend, sanitary T, then above the outgoing side it would have a 4x2 wye that was the vent line. In PVC, I would use a 2 street sanitary T's if I were making it, so that both sides could still be accessed for cleaning.

The house side needs a vent too.

The only reason I ever heard of for whole house traps besides sewer gas (which is a bogus reason imo) was that it stopped rats from coming in the premises. Is there a reason NY requires them?



Edited 1 times.

I know the house side needs a vent, I've never seen a vent on the cesspool side until this house though and thought it was a mistake. Is it supposed to be vented on both sides? I think that the street sanitary tee is the way to go, I just wanted to check because the pictures I had been able to find online seemed to have wye fittings. Is a 2" vent adequate, I'm used to seeing them vented full size at 4" out the side of the house above the trap with a fresh air grill on it around here.

I've seen it pictured like this with PVC, but the street WYE depicted doesn't seem to exist.



On

[www.balkanplumbing.com]



Edited 1 times.

The before I found the break in the pipe:

[@#$%&[s1368.photobucket.com]][/URL]

[@#$%&[s1368.photobucket.com]][/URL]

After a temporary fix:

[@#$%&[s1368.photobucket.com]][/URL]

[@#$%&[s1368.photobucket.com]][/URL]

aren't pictures great..
if it were me, i would cut the 3" PVC, remove the transition clamp to the 3" copper vent and remove the fernco clamp you installed.
now, start fresh.
at the 4" cast iron, install a heavy 4 band stainless sheilded clamp, a short piece of 4" pvc, a 4 x 3 PVC "Y" with a cleanout in the 4" end, a 3" street 45 in the side of the "Y".
now, come back and install a 3" return bend in the location of the old 4".
2 street san tees with the top of one being the vent up to the 3" copper and the other being glued to the existing house drain.
all this will give you a proper 4" cleanout to the street and a vented house trap that your code wants.

Is there a reason that you would transition to 3" PVC to build the trap? Also, I had already contemplated using a wye instead of a 45 off the 4" CI and adding a clean out, you think it's ok to go with PVC at that point rather than doing that part in CI? Is there any down side to doing this all in 4" PVC and replacing the 3" that is existing up to the point where the first fixture is connected? Ultimately I will be replacing every piece of pipe in the house by the time I am done renovating.

since you are obviously NOT a plumber, I wonder how you decided it is vented with the wrong size pipe on the wrong side of the trap? There are many ways to make a 'running trap' which is what a house trap is, but WHICH one is best for you depends on the conditions which we cannot tell since we are not there.

quote; The house side needs a vent to

That is taken care of by the plumbing vent stacks.

quote; it stopped rats from coming in the premises.

That is also a bogus reason because rats can swim.

Do it that way and you might as well glue caps on the tops because you will NEVER be able to snake the lines through those cleanouts.

Compared to the other houses I've seen in this area the set up at my house is different, a smaller vent pipe on the opposite side, I'm assuming that the houses that I know we're done by licensed plumbers are correct and the one I bought where there was other plumbing that was clearly done wrong, was likely done wrong by the previous owner. I'm not familiar with any plumbers who use duct tape to seal up a pipe.





Edited 1 times.

The "Installing plumbers" did the house trap and vent, (and if you notice the vents on your sink traps they are ALWAYS on the downstream side of the trap, just like your house trap vent is. Regardless of how your neighbors were installed), but they were NOT the ones who used the duct tape.

I don't study the behaviors of rats, but I was told that they wouldn't dive under the water. Not saying they won't, but that is what I was told.

Actually, the only other vent in the entire house is on the tub drain and that is 1 1/2 inch copper that goes out the side of the house.



In excavating more brick out around the main drain line to make room to work, I have discovered that the 4 inch cast iron is actually cemented into what appears to be an old larger diameter clay pipe. I'm guessing that it's best to just leave it that way, and attach PVC to the cast iron rather than try to remove the cast iron and cement PVC into the clay pipe?

[s1368.photobucket.com]


[s1368.photobucket.com]

Is there a reason that you would transition to 3" PVC to build the trap?

3 inch pipe is large enough for 3 toilets. actually with toilets flushing at 1.28 gallons you could use more but my code says 3.
anyway a smaller pipe will wash itself cleaner.

When they wind up in toilets, which have the seat down, that is the only way they can get in there.

That COULD be a sleeve for the pipe through the foundation, since they never, as far as I have ever seen, put clay pipe inside the concrete foundation. If that is the only vent in the entire house, then you have more problems than just a bad house trap. IF you have a 4" system, you COULD NOT change just the trap to 3", since that would violate every plumbing code ever written.

Whatever it is, clay pipe or sleeve, is under the original footing. The brick work was added later when the crawl space was dug out like 40 years ago. The original footings date back to 1940. Currently the only part that is 4 inch is the cast iron, after the trap it transitions to 3 inch PVC.

In that case, since they DID install clay pipe under basement floors in that era, it is probably the sewer line.