The start of looking for the source of water coming up under the floor in one of our offices

Some say that "the Devil's in the details", which seems to be the case for legislation that our congress men and women believed they had to pass so they could find out what's in it, but I think the Devil is especially in the plumbing. I can consider myself lucky that I only had a couple of tiny leaks during the installation of the new kitchen sink I got for Laurie after yesterday's round of plumbing at the office. It all begain last month when water started coming up under the floor in Andy's office again.

About 6 months ago, water was coming up under Andy's desk near the wall. After tearing up the floor we found an uncapped drain and capped it. So it was even more mysterious that water was coming up under the floor in a different place last month. We assumed it was another uncapped floor drain that overflowed from what we discovered was a collapsed sewer pipe in the alley behind the office. Once the pipe in the alley was replaced, the wet spot subsided in the office, so we got the carpet cleaned and scheduled capping the offending drain for this week between Christmas and New Year's when the office is closed.

After breaking up the floor, we discovered the sewer lines inside the chase wall that connect the plumbing upstairs, connect to a larger cast iron pipe that run under the floor in the office, and that old cast iron pipe had rusted out and is leaking, but as long as the sewer lines were clear, the leaks were not bad enough saturate the soil and soak up through the floor. So now instead of simply capping an old floor drain, the old cast iron pipe has to be replaced.

Following the pipes back from where the water came up under the floor, the hole got bigger and bigger.

The workers were still breaking up concrete and digging out around the cast iron pipe to expose it when I left in the afternoon.