My mother’s home was built in the 1850 and originally have all the plumbing in the house over the years running down to an open sewer in the back of the yard down a hill. This such as the sink, washer, etc all drained down there.

In the late seventy the washer and sink was set up to drain into a sump pump tank that then pumps the water up through a one way value to the village sewer line.

Recently we noticed a low spot in the yard by the corner of the house and started having holes show up. I have filled up the holes several times, but the grade of the yard has a lot of the water from the roof flowing through there. I finally started poking around in the holes and pulled out a red cinder brick and had the light bulb turn on finally. This is the old drain line that the house was hooked to way back when.

Two questions. There was a floor drain put into another room in the basement about 25 years a go I do not know how or where this drains to. Can I just pour in some soap and flush the lines and see if I get bubbles where the hole in the yard or is there a better way of taking this?

Second if I determine that noting it still flooring through the line other then the topsoil from my mother’s yard how do I properly block the line? Can I just get some rebar and make a grate and stack a bunch of cement bags there and then pack sand bags around it to seal the drain or does the whole drain need to be cement/ collapsed. From what I have been able to see it looks like it could be about 3 feet in diameter and about 18 inches under ground. I don’t want to start digging and have the drain collapse on me and fall into this thing either. And the fact that it is about 3 feet away from the foundation I not sure if digging right there is the best idea to begin with. I'm not sure if blocking it further down the line and then having concrete poured into it so it will back fill would work better then trying to fill at the hole location.

Lastly would this kind of thing be covered under homeowers insurance?

Thanks
Jim

Hey Jinm,


The redbrick that you speak of is part of a Terra-Cotta drain. The fact that it's three feet and not four inches leads me to believe that you have unearthed a storm drain line and not a sewage one. Your floor drain could be tied into this so I would run some water and soap down and see what happens. Or, it could be the drain from a french drain installed to run off rainwater from next to the foundation. If I were me I would be curouis enough to want to know exactly what it was used for. If you find out it's a dead line then, since it's only 18" underground, I would break the top of the pipe in and fill it to grade. Good luck, Tom