How to Seal a Vent?
The inside of our house smells like a latrine, thanks to the location of our front vent. The opening is a drain in the floor at ground level under the stoop. Can we use a test plug or some kind of pro vent or air admittance valve to temporarily seal it? It’s just a pipe…
The inside of our house smells like a latrine, thanks to the location of our front vent.
The opening is a drain in the floor at ground level under the stoop.
Can we use a test plug or some kind of pro vent or air admittance valve to temporarily seal it? It’s just a pipe stuck in the ground, there are no threads, and the cement around the hole is uneven.
We realize plugging up this vent is not allowed by code, but neither is having sewer gas in your house. There is tons of dirt in the pipe already, put there by previous owners, and our plumbing doesn’t seem to have suffered a bit. Everything drains just fine.
Are there any other potential dangers?
We can’t rent the apartment or have people over until we fix this. Plus it’s disgusting, not to mention unhealthy.
Master Plumber, exactly! But the house is filled with sewer gas. What can we do?
Actually, it is filled with dirt now and we don’t have any problems with drainage — but the sewer gas still escapes and fills the house. It’s just like having a vent emptying straight into the house. It’s insane.
Don’t plug it. It’s called the fresh air inlet and you need it to keep the trap flowing.
If it’s a vent and you plug it, you run the risk of screwing up the drainage in the rest of the system. It’s the old science class trick where you turn a soda bottle upside down and it goes “glug, glug, glug” but when you punch a hole in the bottom, it drains in a steady stream. I wouldn’t do anything permanent until I was sure it didn’t affect the rest of the system by plugging it.
Thanks, Dave!!
Technically, we could put a trap in the line and use it as a drain. However, we’d never find a plumber who would agree to do it because it’s illegal. We’re required by law to have that vent there.
They would be happy, though, to divert the vent elsewhere. But that will cost 10 billion dollars.
Fill it with cement. Stuff it with something first so that you create a bas for the cement.
If you put a trap in the line will it revert to a drain??? Not sure what the schenatic looks like but if it slopes downward and into the soil pipe, it’s still a drain.
Dave, how do we seal it? Fortunately, we haven’t had any flooding in that spot at all, so we probably don’t have to worry about that..
I’m sure the original builders thought they were geniuses to combine a vent and a drain. Unfortunately, it is disgusting.
We’ve had a plumber look at it. It’s a vent. There is no trap. In fact, it is THE vent just before the clean out that goes to the front of the house and that we are legally required to leave open. Unfortunately, it ends in a drain. Every house on the block is like this.