My daughter is renting the basement apartment of a 100-year-old home. It’s a fairly decent little place. Except for this. Can someone please tell me why there are cast iron pipes cut open, with air registers over them? Yesterday during the storm they were all full of flowing water. I checked a couple of them and they were all the same, cracked open cast iron pipe under the floor registers. What is going on here? I have more pictures if needed.
Looks to be a hole of some sort.
This fucking guy plumbs over here.
My guess, and it is just a guess… it’s a storm water control system being used as a basement drain, possibly flowing into the sewer line.
I’ve seen older houses where someone cut into the basmeny floor directly into a sewer line to put in a basement drain.
Based on you saying water was in there when it was raining, someone might have cut into the storm water mitigation line for a basement drain. Then someone tiled the floor and put a vent over the hole because that’s what they found that fits.
With older houses, a lot of times, the storm water system was tied directly into the main sewer. If that’s what this is, I’d be concerned about sewer gasses coming up from it.
Again, with only seeing one picture, it’s just a guess.
Edit: It could also just be a cleanout for the storm water drain too.
You mentioned that the house is a century old - I’m assuming it was built as a single dwelling, and subdivided later.
If that’s the case, my best guess is that the basement had a problem with flooding during bad weather, so they busted holes in existing drainage pipes to allow water to drain from the basement. The leaky walls were most likely sealed when it was converted to an apartment, but… Well, drains drains are great until they back up - I would be concerned about water coming up through them in particularly bad weather.
As long as it’s only a drain water system as well. If it connects to sewage at some point I would be concerned of gases which may leak up into the house as well.
Sadam Hussein storage unit.
Looks like a clean-out that doubles as a floor drain (hence the register). It’s probably just storm water running through it so not something to be too worried about.
DIY floor drains if the basement floods?
DIWhy
someones attempt at replacing radiators with forced air?
It took me a minute to understand this. But it makes sense. Obviously there would be some evidence of these CI lines running back to a fan set up? Towards the radiators themselves? I only believe it BC old timers used to do some highly original set ups for all sorts of problems.
That’s my guess.
I’m going with a custom floor drain into a storm drain and possibly the edit on this one… If they cut into sewer lines there is no way your not gonna notice. Not just sewer gases escaping but you would be infested with sewer flies. Put your ear to it and flush a toilet. That should confirm.
Oops. Meant as reply to darkmarx’s edit of his own
