Wednesday, February 4, 2009

This is how you do a chore...

...when you don't have to worry about building inspectors. :-)

When I hauled Serenity away, (it was sitting about where the wheelbarrow is in the first pic) a small problem arose. The area available for driveway was now substantially wider, and a septic line cleanout that had never been an issue before was right where cars are going to want to go. Dumb place for a cleanout, anyway.

So: Make it go away!


Dig down to the pipe. Since there was never any traffic on this spot it was a lot easier than I feared; dirt can get mighty compacted. I could wish this one was deeper, in fact; car tires are heavy.


Cut'er off with a hacksaw, as close to the union as is consistent with putting on a cap or another union down the road. Clean up the cut with your pocketknife.


Install a cap. DON'T glue it down; there's no pressure in that pipe, and you may want it back off someday.


Cover it up, and you're done. Total elapsed time including digging; probably less than 15 minutes.

2 comments:

PintofStout said...

You pulled measurements from other landmarks in order to find it again later, right?

Joel said...

Well...sorta. It's easy enough to sight between two other cleanouts to get latitude; longitude might be a little harder to estimate unless the driveway doesn't shift to the right as I kind of expect it to do. Nothing's perfect.