A new HT drain is tied into the old clay pipe

Are the old clay pipes in the cellar becoming a problem? In the past few years, we have accomplished many things in the house. Initially, the work focused on repair and renovation, but later increasingly on the construction and expansion of the individual rooms.

Much has already been mastered in the cellar as well.

Most of the electrical system was completely renewed, as were the inlets and outlets. The entire house was drained from the outside.

Only in one cellar room on the south-east side had time stood still in recent years. But here, too, things should now be moving forward.

GDR wash house with clay pipes in the floor

The old washhouse differed from the other cellar rooms simply because of the drain in the middle of the floor. The floor was slippery as an eel, waterproof and with a slope of 5% towards the center.

In addition to the floor drain, there was also an old 50mm GDR HT drain pipe on the wall into which we had integrated the drain from the kitchen and the hot tubs, which were located on the floor above.

Now, on the otherwise dry cellar floor, moisture stains appeared from time to time, which I had wanted to investigate for some time. I was also puzzled by the fact that there was always water in the siphon of the drainage shaft in the middle – where did it come from?

At some point I took the time to look for the causes of the moisture. The concrete floor of the old GDR inlet was opened up with a hammer and chisel. Despite the concrete floor, this was surprisingly easy to do.

As the condition of the ground revealed, the GDR pipe was subsequently integrated and the trench filled with a different concrete. This was not particularly solid but sufficiently stable.

So I picked my way along the drainpipe and found a sharp 90° angle after a good 15 centimeters. From there, the plastic pipe continued towards the center of the room.

Somewhere this pipe would discharge into the floor drain and then into the main sewer pipe.

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Chiseling up the old floor in the laundry room

After a good 100 cm, the ground became harder and harder and instead of the large clods of concrete at the beginning, only small crumbs came off.

I need more power – and so the pneumatic chisel was connected to the compressor.

Now I was moving forward again until I came across the clay pipe lying across my new trench in the direction of the floor drain.

The HT pipe was integrated into the stone pipe from above through a small hole. An old rag and a concrete mixture were used as a seal, but this was relatively easy to remove.

Had I already found the source of the basement damp here?

Earthworms in clay pipe drain

So that I could connect the HT pipe to the clay pipe cleanly and watertight, I had to find a sleeve, a transition, to the next clay pipe. So I also uncovered the area around the stone pipe in the direction of the central house drain.

At a trench depth of a good 30 cm, I had already reached below the gravel layer in the clay soil. The smell of old sewage water hit my nose.

The ground became increasingly damp and loamy – and it started to move!

And to my astonishment, this moist, supple clay soil was alive – it consisted of hundreds of earthworms that felt right at home in the soil around the clay pipe.

The worms were deep red and relatively long and thick. I suspect that they were dew worms or the common earthworm.

Those who know the snake pit scenes from Indiana Jones know what I mean.

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Shortly afterwards, I was relieved to discover the socket to the next clay pipe in the direction of the central sewage shaft. Now this area was generously cleaned of soil and earthworms.

Obviously, the clay pipe from the center of the room was not flush with the continuing pipe.

The water from the GDR HT pipe did not flow into the drainage shaft at all, but gradually seeped into the ground around the clay pipe.

KG pipe tie into the old GDR clay pipe

A solution had to be found!

First a measurement was taken to replace the old GDR pipe with HT or KG pipe. A further branch was also to integrate a floor drain to be installed later at a different location.

And finally, the whole, this time tightly, had to be tied into the old clay pipe.

Fortunately, there was still a suitable sleeve including rubber ring for the transition from the HT or KG to the clay pipe in my building materials store.

The vitrified clay sleeve was then fitted precisely to the clay pipe, with loud swearing.

The 90° angle from the vertical HT pipe from the kitchen has been replaced by two 45° angles – this results in better washing off of the residues in the pipe.

With a 45° T-piece, some angles and some yardage of pipe, the connection was now closed again – and it was tight!

The water test showed no leaks, so the narrow gap between the transition sleeve and the clay pipe was generously compacted with silicone before the pipe was sanded and reinforced with concrete to stabilize it.

Once the new position of the floor drain is known, the T-piece can then be rotated accordingly and the rest of the pipe laid accordingly.