3rd floor attic bathroom...

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thechurchmanse

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Hi Terry,
we have a 100 year old church manse, which over the years has had many upgrades. However, plumbing is really not one of them. About 3 years ago we had a pipe burst in our upstairs main bathroom. We only have one main bathroom and a 1/2 bathroom downstairs. We had a plumber come and help us fix the problem, but in the meantime wanted to eventually renovate the main bathroom on the second floor so we only did what was necessary, as we are probably going to gut and re-lay out a different design in the main bathroom. Since the 2nd floor bathroom is the only place there is a shower, we have thought that putting a 2nd full bathroom in our 3rd floor attic- with a corner shower, sink and toilet, would be a good idea- not only up grading the house by adding another full bathroom- but helping us out with a bathroom we can use while the renovations to the 2nd floor takes place.

My question is, I was going through your forum and noticed another gentleman is doing somewhat the same idea and you suggested putting in a whole new vent/drain for the attic bathroom. We do not have any venting with the upstairs bathroom or the 1/2 bathroom. We are on a septic system as well as pressurized well. Do we have to consider something the same? Also the vent/drain is a 3" cast iron pipe- and we will have to be going through floor joices about 3 or 4 to connect the pipe to the cast iron drain- how do we ensure that the bathroom in the attic won't collapse- or how do we strengthen those floor joices. I am the wife of a handyman and he is planning on doing this- he has done plenty of plumbing jobs with great success, but this one is making him scratch his head, and when I read your forum, I started to worry that we are getting into more than we bargained for! We have already purchased the shower toilet and sink- our other idea is to put a bathroom into an ajoining bedroom beside the bathroom - would this be an easier project?

Thanks a ton!
excited to hear your ideas!
 

Jimbo

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This is a pretty big job. I don't understand when you say you have no vents for the second floor bathroom? If this is so, it is a big problem.

And if you do have a vent stack running up through to the roof, you cannot use this as the drain to connect the 3rd floor bath to.

As with many old buildings, it sounds like your plumbing may have been cobbled together over the years. Now is the time to possibly make it all right, rather than compound previous errors and get to a point where nothing works at all!

dwv_b2.jpg
 
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thechurchmanse

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3rd floor attic bathroom

thanks for your speedy reply. My understanding is that the vent pipe and the drain pipe are one of the same. The reason I say that is right now we have taken out the lath and plaster walls and ceiling in the second floor bathroom and there are no visable vents attached to this drain pipe- which is 3" cast iron. did they not vent pumbling in the 50's because that is likely when all this was done- possibly earlier. When we were looking at the pumbing books it constantly talks about venting the pumbing and we have not seen this done at all in this house. I think this sounds like a job for a plumber, don't you?
:confused:
 

Geniescience

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draw a stick diagram

After you post a skimpy line drawing, people reading this will see better what you have, and comments will be more accurate. Draw anything using a stick drawing in naive fashion. I use MS Paint to make a monochrome bitmap, and each drawing is about 20k in size.

When I suggested this on https://terrylove.com/forums/showthread.php?p=58276 the originator gots lots of very good feedback. It'll work for you too.

david
 

Jimbo

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Plumbing has always had vents. Any unvented job has always been incorrect and problematic. Some pictures would help us to know what you actually have now.
 
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