Week 5 - Soil pipe

This week we have started installing the new soil pipes for the building. For those not in the know, dont think of soil in the garden, think more along the lines of soiled pants - that's right guys we're talking poo! Of which i thankfully managed to completely avoid touching or getting on me in any way (Ben however did not... my bad)

I was working with the skilled and talented Mr Ben Lane of 'Puddle Lane Plumbing', so at least one of us knew what we were doing.

There is currently a soil pipe connected to mains drainage right in the front corner of the building serving a singe toilet and sink. The new layout however has multiple water and drainage points throughout so we needed to channel new piping into the concrete floor slab to where they are needed.

Cutting into concrete to a depth of up to half a meter required the use of some VERY manly power tools indeed. My inner 8 year old self was virtually wetting his spider-man pants with excitement.
The tools did not disappoint... well not for the first 10 mins or so anyway. A jack hammer is essentially a hardcore Pogo-Stick designed less for bounce and fun but more noise and destruction. By the time Id spent 3 days on it my body felt rather pulverized.

As you can see in the photos below the battle between man and concrete was won and the pipes are in place. We are now waiting for building control to sign it off before we concrete them over.

 1st job was to cut through the slab to revel where the mains drainage connects. The old soil pipe in the building just did a 90 degree bend from here and went straight up the wall. We have more grand plans...

 Starting to cut into the ground floor slab to run the new pipes underneath, as you can see it make a LOT of concrete dust, so much so in fact passers buy were worried the building was on fire!

 The urge to wave a revving petrol powered saw above your head like a crazed mad-man was very strong and we both succumbed - we limited ourselves to only once each though (Ok fine, twice!)

 Making progress

 The finished laid pipes for downstairs first fix plumbing, complete with inspection camber - in case you forget what it looks like