what does replacing a waste pipe entail?
@jhcovert – Could you recommend your GC? I’m at rebecca dot stubbs at gmail. Would REALLY appreciate it. Thank you!
Guest User | 5 years and 11 months ago
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Guest User | 6 years ago
We just had to replace the stack from the bottom of the second floor, through the parlor floor, through the garden level and then the entire horizontal run in the cellar – there were cracks and 2ft of very slow draining, immovable blockage that was more rusted pipe than anything else. Once out, we could see that the pipe was no more than .25” in some places. We were in the midst of a reno, but the walls had to be opened, brick removed and piping replaced. All walls were then refinished. The whole thing ran us $3800 all in. I’m realizing now what a fair price that was and it only further serves to help me appreciate our GC. Definitely try replacing a section and find a plumber who will do it in a manner considerate of the rest of the line.
stevecym | 6 years ago
I’ve waited to see how many likes dibs reply got about kids going for a trade such as welding before laying out the grim reality about such an endeavor. let’s say I went to welding school now and worked for a year at $25.00 an hour to get some experience and in a year bought the equipment and set out to do this as a trade. I have a house, so I have to maintain medical insurance (in my case now its through my wife) as I cannot go down to the emergency room with a sob story and expect the taxpayers to foot the bill. i have to pay taxes (they’ll take my house if i don’t). i have to pay into social security. i have to carry insurance. i have to be licensed. if i hire people, i have to carry workmen’s comp because if i don’t i am breaking labor laws and if someone gets hurt the state will sue me and take my assests. what does all this mean? i have to charge a minimum for me alone, $150 and hour to pay these things and pay myself $50.00 an hour. what will happen if go to a job in Brooklyn and quote somebody $1500 for something that takes about 10 hours? th ey will get a quote from somebody who is new to the country and less established and pays his help $20 and hour and makes $35 an hour himself and provides no medical coverage, has no formal training, breaks a litany of labor laws and pays everyone including himself off the books. that guy might be able to charge 50% of what someone like i would have to, so the homeowner gets a quote for $750 and some of them will still think that is a lot of money. that is the reality of this situation.
ok, so short of setting out on my own, i can hope to get into a union. that’s limited. so i can go work for a non union shop. if i walk into a non union shop and try to negotiate 30.00 an hour (and what family man in NYC wants to work for 30 an hour?) with two weeks paid vacation, medical insurance, demand that they carry workmen’s comp, and a minimum of 6 paid sick days a year, they would laugh at me. they’ll hire someone who just arrived here for $30 an hour (probably less and they will force them to work overtime at straight pay), no vacation, no sick, no medical. and they guy will be happier than i would be because he does not pay taxes, he does not have to worry about medical insurance as he has no house for the hospital to attach if he gets hurt. that’s the reality.
i have worked with my hands all of my life and fully believe that men were made to work that way; no way would i send my son into a trade unless we were in a strong union environment and the rest of the populace understood the damage we are doing to our own lower paid or working class citizens with the mass influx of cheap labor. the low pay has pushed americans out. the political environment, specifically the democratic party, no longer supports workers and consequently, we have no one because that other party doesn’t care either (if they did they would not have set about gutting Obama’s health care plan – which no one could afford anyway- and instead of the tax cut they would have passed an infrastructure bill and put thousands to work on bridge and highway projects).
nobody reading this wants their child to take on a trade. trust me.
stevecym | 6 years ago
and dibs your comment about the shortage of barista’s is so sad but true. there is a trade off here. go to work for a low paid welding shop to learn without proper medical or disability insurance (no safety net) in case you get hurt with the hope something better comes along later (which it might) or take a less stress job with less chance of serious injury for the same crappy pay?
stevecym | 6 years ago
part of the problem is, we make all these laws and then we don’t enforce them until someone gets hurt. The laws should be good as they “level the playing field” but there is no enforcement. and legitimate operators have to charge more to make a living and must comply or they face losing assets when something goes wrong. if master plumber read what I wrote above or what I am saying here, he would know exactly what I am talking about because he, like me, has to negotiate this every day and maybe that is why he is only doing consulting now.
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
The only trade worth going into is electric as the enforcement from the dob keeps the shady operators out and helps maintain a level playing field. everyone is licensed and everyone carries insurance and everyone has to charge the same or they fold. this is the truth.
kms_bkyn | 5 years and 11 months ago
thanks everyone. We are currently doing work in our basement and will soon do work in our kitchen, so replacing the basement and first floor pieces won’t be too annoying.
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
back to what dibs said about going into a trade – and I still see he is getting a couple of likes on his post; people like dibs and society say the right thing (it should be that way) but the reality is something else. I am going to lay something else out about having a mass of untrained trades people working in a place NY City. these low paid individuals spend a lot of time learning short cuts. these short cuts often do not show up the day they take them and I am talking about things we should be able to leave someone do without supervision. painting for instance. One of my most memorable instances was when I hired a “painter” a couple years back to paint. he went to use the paint without stirring it. for a long time I didn’t know what would happen if we do not stir finishes as my mother told me when I helped work on the addition my parents put on the house when I was 10 “you always stir the paint”. Like a good boy, I never questioned my mother and from that day forward, I stirred the paint. I hire “painters” here whose egos are so giant that they cann ot stand having someone tell them how to do their “trade”; I now know what happens when we don’t stir finishes and I see it all the time now when people call me to fix the finish a “painter” screwed up; in stains the colors stay on the bottom and the job will get darker as they move through the can and with paints and varnishes, the flatteners stay on the bottom so the finish goes on glossy at the start of the can and becomes flat at the end. this what these “tradesmen” taught me about finishes when I hit my late ’30’s and I never would have known if I had not seen it and called the manufacturers to find out what was going on. I tried to explain to this painter that we had to stir the paint. Now right here is the point of what I am saying and thank you all who are reading this far to get it: He told me “no one stirs the paint” (in addition to telling me I was difficult). this is the problem. this behavior becomes the norm and pulls what is acceptable down and as a result consumers are getting crap. this why we hear stories of people buying houses and things start going wrong a year after they move it. I try to explain to people how careful we must be with each step of the process (I did a pair of doors for a church and I am teaching one of the parishioners how to maintain the finish); that every step of the way we must struggle to do our absolute best or the entire job can fall apart later (with the church I am afraid the finish can fail or dust appear if he does not lightly sand the old finish or tack it); that kind of attention to detail is not longer heard of; these tradespeople are thinking as far as 5PM and that is it; no thought as to what will happen a year down the road. I had someone else tell me they do not use “primer”.
here is the problem with having this many “tradesmen” running around a city taking shortcuts. they can do the job faster, perhaps even half the time. so when someone comes along and offers up a higher price, the consumer has no understanding of why this is happening and many (not all) go with the lower price. keep in mind what I said about the insurance and all that a legitimate operator has to carry, and an honest tradesman cannot make a living in this environment; there really are too few customers willing to pay what it takes (that is why I only work on doors and won’t strip a door surround because some guy will do it for 15 an hour). the expected way for a tradesmen to work now, is to hire a bunch of people at 25 an hour, break labor laws (don’t worry if they are undocumented they will not complain to the authorities), don’t provide sick days or insurance and then provide them with intense supervision and suffer the resulting headaches.
the trades in the entire city are predicated on this model. and while savvy or experienced homeowners rise above it because they know they have to pay for quality, many people, especially homeowners in the outlying areas fall into this; I have literally had people (not in Brooklyn) call me a “gouger”. that’s because they have gotten used to have things done by someone making 20 an hour (these are the same people by the way who support trump and his wall; its a weird paradox; if we stop the in flow of people, you will pay more).
in this environment, I would never tell my child to go into a trade. not welding, not plumbing, not woodworking, and definitely not painting.
greenworks | 5 years and 11 months ago
@kms_bkyn good to hear you’re already doing work! It would be totally annoying if you had just finished the project.
Best of luck and let us know how it turns out.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
@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.
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.