Standing gray water under the house

[HeroOfPellinor]

Must be some kind of leak in our old house's cast iron plumbing leading from the kitchen.

I'm guessing we're going to have to have a lot of the soil raked out and some anti-fungal put down. We noticed the smell by our HVAC furnace a year and a half ago. Figured it had something to do with our old HVAC system which had a slight leak. Finally had a home inspector come out and he guessed that was it but couldn't get far enough under the house to verify. I just sawed a new crawlspace access hole and peeked down there and can see the mess.

Anybody else run into this?

First of all, since our front yard is a slope, he recommended a french drain in the backyard which I'll do myself since I've used a trencher before. That will keep moisture from leaching up from the water table.

Then, he said we can either replace the pipe and throw some lime down there on the wet stuff or we can have the soil raked up and an anti-fungal treatment applied and pot ash put down over the removal space. I'm leaning towards the latter to make sure it's done right.

So hooray for getting to use a Ditch Witch again. Boo for dropping several thousand for repair of stupid problems like rotted freaking cast iron plumbing.

 

[Kreon]

I'm no expert at this, but logically wouldn't it make sense to replace the pipe in either situation?

If the iron pipe is rotted now, it will continue too, that much I know
eventually the whole pipe would rust away, and you'd have to replace it anyways...

Both in one shot?

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: Kreon
I'm no expert at this, but logically wouldn't it make sense to replace the pipe in either situation?

If the iron pipe is rotted now, it will continue too, that much I know
eventually the whole pipe would rust away, and you'd have to replace it anyways...

Both in one shot?

Yeah, sorry. It's either
1) replace pipe and toss down lime
2) replace pipe, rake up damp soil, apply anti fungal, put down pot ash