what does replacing a waste pipe entail?
hi all — Our 110 year old waste pipe has a crack in it. The crack is in our cellar. Before I start calling plumbers and contractors to fix it, I’d love to know what the process of replacing the pipe entails – how long does it take, ballpark of how much it will cost, do we need to replace the whole thing (cellar, first floor and second floor), or can we just replace the piece in the basement for now? Thanks for any
kms_bkyn
in Plumbing 5 years and 11 months ago
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Guest User | 5 years and 11 months ago
@jhcovert – Could you recommend your GC? I’m at rebecca dot stubbs at gmail. Would REALLY appreciate it. Thank you!
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
work is fun, I have to give in sometimes to maintain the friendship.
workisfun | 5 years and 11 months ago
Where is the trickle down?
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
well, I just told one of my republican, trump supporting friends on Long Island what I have been writing here and he went ballistic. He’s been listening to me talk about health care for all for years and arguing with me and we enjoy the banter. he also reminded me, “this is capitalism” as he does every time we go down this road. but when he realized I have gone from speaking this stuff to one or two isolated people to actually posting it on the internet in a progressive community like Brooklyn, he lost it. I will give him a few days to settle and then I will call him and admit to him that “yes, I do believe the economy is doing so well because of the man you (he; not any of you reading this and not me) helped vote into the white house” and I will leave the part out about how we now have to find the money for essential benefits (even just those required by law) for the people who provide the services he enjoys, such as the landscaping he has done in his yard, until his blood pressure has settled.
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
soslope: plumbers can speak more to this, but I saw one come out of a building that looked like swiss cheese. literally, after I poured the dark brown acid down there to clear a clog. this is what happens with them. they begin to rot and you see what look like little discolorations on them. if you leave them, eventually, they fail. if you put a tool to them or even your finger, you can put it through.
SoSlope | 5 years and 11 months ago
Going back to the original question: when someone refers to a pipe “rotting,” does that simply mean that the iron pipe has rusted away?
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
let me add something else here: with respect to women in this industry. and i mean the most vulnerable. i don’t mean women who majored in art at college and now do this work as a real trade, stained glass, wood work and wood finishing, i mean people who took this work because they had to. most women in this situation do this because a significant other was doing and they began as a team. women from other cultures do not willingly go into these trades where they will be working alongside men (i have managed teams and the men don’t think the women belong there and we get push back when assigning work; good old fashioned sexism, the kind from my grandfather’s day). for these women, it is necessity. the point i am making is, if someone discriminates and finds a woman and under pays here, her S.O. is not wearing a suit and tie and pulling down 150k in manhattan. She cannot simply get pissed off at the maltreatment in the workplace and decide to stay home. her S.O is someplace else working his hands. the choices workers have at this level are very limited.
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
i’ll continue: I am taking part of what I said in the last long post and will elaborate on it.
A few years ago woman came on here seeking to hire a woman to do some work (it may have been painting or drywall; it was not cleaning because when people protested the discrimination she said “I want to see how they are at their trade”. I’ll digress a little more here: I hire women and what I have learned is the woman will be the better candidate as she has had to work harder over the years and learn more to compete in a male environment; its almost a given she also be paid more because of what she has learned)
when some of us protested the discrimination the poster cited “affirmative action” and I stated that barring a planned and monitored affirmative action program, no one should try to implement their own “affirmative action”. she could not understand why and nor could some of the readers who chimed in in support of her. to me working in the filed, never mind my useless college degree, this is common sense.
none of us, including me knows what fair pay is in NYC . I know what it costs to legally run this sole person business and what it would cost to give myself medical and disability insurance. but I have no idea what fair pay is for a free lance painter of drywall person in ny. Do we base it on the union wage for a mason in nyc ($92 an hour with benefits)? if that woman fired back and said she would pay 92 an hour for a drywall worker (or even 70), I would have said, “wow you are serious about affirmative action and wage parity” and i would have congratulated her).
this is not how things like this work. Let me explain how things with that affirmative action program could have gone wrong. First the people we are talking about are what we term in this society “vulnerable” people. they are most likely working without worker’s comp, off the books and not paying into social security, they have no health care (no free lance in NYC charging less than 60 an hour has health care and at 60 its a crappy plan) and they are probably working for say $25 to $30 an hour. these people working for 30 an hour probably find that they have to work for that price or they get passed over or people make comments to them about their price. my guess is, to enable them to begin to dream about the American dream, the minimum we have to give them is about $50 an hour. Something tells me, that the woman who cited affirmative action was not thinking about 50 an hour. if i am wrong and she was (and she may read this; we were in email contact after those posts), i am sorry.
so let me continue with this and point out what I think can happen in community like Brooklyn if someone finds a way to pay vulnerable people who have no one to speak for them and who spend more time worrying about the next 30 dollar an hour job than they do holding their children in their laps. now, I may be wrong about some of this; after all, I only took a few economics class as that now bankrupt Dowling College in the 1980’s and only have a BA in English (a customer once said to me, joking, “you should be washing dishes”).
if someone finds that they can hire someone for less, say 20 or 25 and hour based on their gender (or some characteristic protected by (I think) title 7 or the other civil rights laws) and then a lot more other people find they can do the same and hire people for less based on those attributes and they continue to do so, they hurt the person they think their “affirmative action” plan is helping because that wage becomes the new norm. this probably how we got to where we are at today. it started twenty five years ago. great we’re hiring people who don’t look like ourselves and we are paying them less and less at every turn.
back to the example of the woman who tried to cite affirmative action. she might think she was doing a woman a favor by hiring her. but if she is paying her less, and most likely she is paying her less than her worth because I am in this working and I cannot even figure that, the woman she hired has to work longer to make less. Are we helping her? let’s say the new norm becomes whatever that wage is, $25. it spreads. people begin hiring people based on gender and race and they offer $25 an hour and the workers feel they have to take it; after all there is no union here and our two party political system is so useless. so now, that woman’s husband has to accept $25 an hour and he may have been making 30 a few months before. we just hurt two vulnerable people. Now they both have to work more for less. how is that on the home life (the apartment they share with another couple)?
I think this is how we got were we are today.
when I was fighting back against that woman who cited affirmative action, people came on tried to justify what she was doing as if I was some boogyman who had no idea what i was talking about and i may not. let me digress a moment and point something out about real craftsman; we live this stuff, we go home and talk to others about what we do and issues that come up and like a bunch of computer geeks, when we get together with our like friends over a few beers, we talk shop, wood, adhesives, finishes; we share our successes and admit our failures to one another openly. this issue I have just written about, I have been talking over with Phd’s, human resources managers (in one case a director of HR at a middling to large long island company) and a litany of people on the ground and I can have three African American customers of mine come on here and say just that, that we’ve talked about the issue of race and compensation over a period of years. each of these groups of people i mention brings a slightly different perspective and never mind my republican friends on Long Island; “its capitalism” (i want to vomit). I may off with some of this but don’t think I am wrong.
now, what I have written here may be a trial run for something larger. maybe, maybe not. i would love to see the editors of brownstoner pick this up and address it in their own headline.
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
by the way, and I am writing this stuff over a fast cup of tea, I did read my last long comment over, not the short one above, and I noticed quite a few errors including a few missing words (“do ….” should have been “do not”) but I hope it was easy enough for folks to get what I was saying. I might edit all this stuff and repost it was one long post.
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
@chris petri: do you mean the conversation about the pipe repair or my diversion? I have wanted to write something for a long time and title it “the white elephant in the room” because I read all this stuff on brownstoner about contractors and see headlines boasting of ever higher listing prices and brownstoner has real editors working for them, but I have never seen this issue addressed. It is time it was said. and for those of us who must abide by the laws and maintain professionalism, it is not only difficult to do so and make a living but it is increasingly physically hard because we have to do the work alone or be like everyone else. and perhaps we know that’s wrong.
lkrshacmzcy | 5 years and 11 months ago
As a plumber, I just have to say it is awesome to see an extensive conversation like this !
lkrshacmzcy | 5 years and 11 months ago
As a plumber, I just have to say it is awesome to see an extensive conversation like this !
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
@jhcovert: I know I have hijacked this thread with this, and I am sorry for that. the opportunity availed itself. I have been thinking a little about what you have said and how we found ourselves here. first, consumers literally have no idea what it cost to run a legitimate company. I had a family member once ask “why don’t I get a break when I hire a company that uses undocumented help?” I had to explain that she was getting the break, that if she had gotten a quote from a company operating fully above board the quote would have been a lot more than the one using the help they had and I told her that the next time she got a quote, demand everybody be on the books, and she would see what I am talking about. I suspect over the years, some contractors accidently fell into this way of operating. maybe 20 years ago, they were running legitimately. but other start ups came along and they were using cheaper labor and they were getting the jobs – so like it or not, other companies had to follow. that’s one thing when that happen.
please read on:
a few ye ars ago, I got hit a parked car in Brooklyn. like a nice man I left a note on the window. the woman took the car to her shop and she assured me it was a great business as we talked on the phone and I told her a little about myself. I went to pay the bill. the owner, who had massive body and repair business in Flushing or someplace in eastern queens and was a very astute businessman, had to meet me. he didn’t want to just get paid for car repair. he had 3 people working the counter in the office who could have taken the money. this guy comes running in with his hand out to shake mine as if he just made 50 grand off this repair and then he tells me he the chance to start a company running crown molding for developer friend of his in a big building going up in manhattan and he wanted me to work for him supervising and sourcing the help I would need to run crown. I told him no anyway. running crown is beginner stuff and I didn’t want to do it. he began begging me and days later called me and told me he told found someone to run the crown but he needed my help “sourcing these guys that hang out on work corners and work for 80 dollars a day”. I wanted to vomit. I flat out told him, “I do have the stomach to pay an adult man 80 dollars a day”. he kept calling me and I tried to tell him what he was doing was wrong and he did not get that as business people we should be against such behavior.
its one thing when we fall into this. ok, we are a single mom and we work for the mta and we need a nanny. our options are limited so we hire a nanny for 15 an hour with no benefits. that’s what you have to do. however, if we are an executive at a big company, this is wrong. It was wrong for that man with the body shop because he was setting up a business plan that included something akin to modern day slavery (slaves got some food and housing in a room with a lot of other people and rags for clothes and 10 would give someone in modern nyc just that; his plan was no better than slavery). Planning something like this as that man did, is outright racism. he is seeking people by race to take advantage of them. I have watched this happen with others: the president of a major international company told my wife she wish she could afford an “irish nanny” but she was “so strapped for cash” that in order to be able to buy a second home at the jersey shore and be able send her kids to private school, she had to settle on an immigrant woman of color. it racism and it wrong on so many levels and it hurts lower paid americans.
I have complained about this to others and they say this is capitalism. capitalism should not involve breaking laws.
a couple years back, a woman came on here seeking a worker by gender. some people took offense to this but I made a case against and some could not understand why (or perhaps they were trump supporters and they thought her behavior was acceptable). the reason I was against it was, not that i want to see more women employed but because I am too used to watching people take advantage of people by race and gender and discrimination hurts EVERYONE at the bottom; it skews the entire wage structure.
back to your comment about the cost of doing work on a home in NYC. what you say is true but it has always been hard for people to work on houses. We also make more here (except those people making 20 an hour, they don’t). I go on quotes. I only work on doors now and part of the reason for that is everything I talked about here. when I did other things, there was something I realized with a lot people: they want it all now. when my grandparents and parent did work on the houses, it was in fits and starts as they saved money. I understand that it may be hard to work on floors of a brownstone without ripping the entire place apart (because of the wires and pipes; in suburbs where I come from you could work on rooms or a side of the house; we put an addition on while living there with little interruption) but this “I want it all now” is contributing to this situation. In many cases, we can still save money and find a way to do it and keep everyone happy.
I have wanted to say something about this for years. I am working in this and see it at another level than everyone reading this. I have social sciences degree and began work on my masters and at one time thought I would get a Phd. and possibly teach at the college level. what i have been seeing goes against everything i should stand for and it has been building for about ten years now and as i talk to more African Americans in Brooklyn, because i am getting them as customers, it is opening my eyes to point that not only do i understand what they mean when they say “white privilege” (and i recently admitted to some that i am guilty of using it; if anyone wants to ask me what i did, you can on the side and i will answer) but it is disgusting.
Again, i am sorry i hijacked this post with all this, but i had an in and i have wanted to say this for some time.
kms_bkyn | 5 years and 11 months ago
Right now our contractors have wrapped the pipe to try to keep it from leaking. hopefully we’ll replace the basement piece in the next month or two. I’ll report back.
greenworks | 5 years and 11 months ago
@kms also would love to know how much it eventually cost, who you used and what method they used to sever and rejoin. I assume we’ll be facing a similar project soon.
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
jhcovert: and thank you for replying the way you did. i have wanted to say something like this for years now but i did not want to come on here and do it as i was afraid people would “why would i hire him, he sounds like a whinny ….” at the same time, i know scores of men out there who want to say it but because they don’t have a degree in English like i do, they won’t sit down and put a sentence together on the ‘net. thank you again for reading this, all of you.
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
jhcovert; thank you for reading. points taken, i think it is a lot of things and i also think it has to do with the income inequality we are seeing in this country. its the bigger picture that’s the problem.
Guest User | 5 years and 11 months ago
@stevecym – it’s a bleak picture you paint of the current and future state of trades in NY. I’ve long known that you get what you pay for, and with the advent of the internet, I think (hope) that savvy homeowner’s are better able to understand what they’re getting or, rather, not getting when they go for the lowest price point. With that said, the amount of money it takes to own and maintain a home in New York City is staggering. I do understand why people will often opt to spend less in the immediate – they simply may not have what it takes to afford the reliability of the true tradesman, but the work HAS to get done. It’s a bad position for everyone.
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
thanks DIBS. For years now, I have listened to people say that we should be directing our youth back to trades and I have been shaking my head and wanting to say something and you the gave me that in. people have to know that this is what is going on.