Guy Merritt
New Member
I've done a lot of home remodeling and I'm about a C+ amateur plumber. While I've re-plumbed bathrooms, I've never built a house, from the ground up. If I understand correctly, the waste pipe in a structure needs to be vented through the roof to release gases, and, to provide air pressure for proper down-flow of water and waste. Our house is completely crazy - it started out as a tiny, concrete block structure and various people added on to the thing, about 3 times. From the outside, it's now a fairly attractive colonial. But the second floor was added by by simply building on top of a fairly low-pitched existing roof (a recent discovery, when I built a new stair case), there are walls behind walls, 3 layers of drywall in the ceilings on the first floor - the place is crazy. In an upstairs bedroom, there's a 4-inch PVC pipe (going from the floor to the ceiling) that I believe is a vent pipe for the plumbing. Basically, it could serve no other purpose (pic, below).
However, there is no vent on the top of the house. So, I can only surmise that the vent pipe simply empties into the attic (I've never looked in the attic). That sounds crazy to me, but in this house "crazy" is just par for the course. So, while it seems wrong to me: can the vent pipe just open into the attic??? Second, my wife's mother just moved in and we need a bathroom on the second floor. Is there any reason that I couldn't connect to the existing vent pipe to vent a 2nd floor bathroom? I'm hoping that we can leave the vent pipe as it is (although I am assuming that this cannot be correct, code-wise) because (1) our second story is really high (for me), and, (2) we got a new roof, literally, about a week ago. I'd rather not have anyone make a new hole in the roof.
However, there is no vent on the top of the house. So, I can only surmise that the vent pipe simply empties into the attic (I've never looked in the attic). That sounds crazy to me, but in this house "crazy" is just par for the course. So, while it seems wrong to me: can the vent pipe just open into the attic??? Second, my wife's mother just moved in and we need a bathroom on the second floor. Is there any reason that I couldn't connect to the existing vent pipe to vent a 2nd floor bathroom? I'm hoping that we can leave the vent pipe as it is (although I am assuming that this cannot be correct, code-wise) because (1) our second story is really high (for me), and, (2) we got a new roof, literally, about a week ago. I'd rather not have anyone make a new hole in the roof.
