When all you have is a backyard foundry...

...every problem starts looking like it can only be solved with a casting!

The problem:

There is a drain in the center of the flat top of my roof. It allows rain and melted snow to run down through a pipe that follows the underside of the roof, down through the bottom of the eaves, where the drain pipe connects into a downspout leading to ground level in the back yard.

In the winter, the bottom end of the drain pipe gets plugged up with ice. Then, when the snow on top of the roof starts melting, the ice plug makes the water back up the drain pipe.

That drain pipe has been my bane since we moved in 15 years ago. Once when we had water dripping all over the house, it traced back to a join in this pipe hat had been made with duct tape then sealed up behind drywall! Well, I have finally chased down (up?) what has to be the last leak: the connection between the actual drain piece up on the roof, and the drain pipe on the roof's underside. But this join is sandwiched between where the 4 main roof beams meet in the middle, therefore impossible to access.

Last February I was awakened by my wife screaming that it was raining in the attic. I dashed up there barefoot and promptly slipped on some tile, landed wrong, and caused the 4 fingers of my left hand to bend back the wrong way until the fingernails touched the back of my hand and the knuckles went "POP!"



The solution:

A lost foam cast 2-1/4" diameter bronze ball! I made 2 just in case one didn't work out.







Drilling the hole through the ball was by far the worst part. I came at it from either side but the last 0.5mm or so seemed to be made of adamantium or something. No problem widening the hole, but it Would. Not. Go. Any. Deeper, no matter what I tried. I spent most of the day and trashed like 6 different drill bits trying to punch through that last bit. Even busted the chuck on my favourite drill somehow... In the end, a pointy Dremel diamond grit coated burr scratched through the remaining paper thin bit of bronze within less than 3 seconds, then the rest of the hole was easy as anything to finish. Weird, and I really wish I had tried that earlier.

Anyhow, you probably get the idea now, I dropped the ball on a string down the drain hole and it magically rolled all the way down with no issues, then I had a string to tie to an ice dam melting wire that I was able to pull up through the downspout and drain pipe and into the attic through the trap door in the roof (super easily with no troubles at all), where it can be plugged in in the winter. Right?
Yeah, sure it was that easy... Riiiiight.

What really happened was, the ball rolled about 5' down the drain pipe and stopped dead.

A leaf blower aimed down the hole seemed like the obvious solution. And it worked! Got the ball through some crazy bends in the pipe and all the way to this one little area where the drain pipe connects to the downspout. The end of the drain pipe gets narrower there so it can slip into the downspout. Guess where the ball ended up... Yup, it was juuuust too big to fit through.

Luckily that is right where there is still a hatch in the drywall from where I fixed that duct tape join I mentioned earlier, from several years ago. I had to saw the drain pipe off (have coupler, need solvent/glue which I'll pick up today), fish the ball out, untie it, thread the string through a coupler then then the rest of the drain pipe, reattach the ball, open a handy clean-out in the pipe that was right there by fortunate coincidence, grab the string and hang onto it, put the ball into the downspout, reconnect the drain pipe, and drop the string. This time the ball made it all the way to the bottom of the downspout, where it got stuck again. I managed to pry it out from the bottom end without any further drama though.

After all that, untying the ball then using the string to pull a 75' long ice dam melting wire back up through what is apparently about 65' of plumbing was a breeze.

I think it just might work!

And it only took about my whole Thanksgiving long weekend.

Happy (slightly belated Canadian) Thanksgiving everyone!

I'll be very thankful if my roof doesn't leak this winter the first time a bunch of snow starts to melt.

Jeff

 

Sounds like an interesting older home. Have a picture of the outside??

 

Sure. Although it was easier to run out and snap some than to dig for older pix.

Here is a picture of the place sometime way back in the day.



Sign over the front door says it was built in 1903.



Here's the front of the house from a little farther back.



And from the side with the least trees blocking the view. The little shed built into the back of the house is where I work on patterns and make molds, etc. There's another (detached) shed out back where the furnaces live.



Here it is from the backyard. You can see the downspout in question here. Might be hard to see but up at the top end it does a Y, one from the eavestrough and one out from the bottom of the roof which now has a heating wire running all the way through it.



You like my super classy raised garden bed?
The roof needs a new coat of paint.

Jeff

 

Yeah there's a basement. You might be able to see one of the basement windows in the pic taken from the side.

Jeff

 

Yeah, that did not feel good. I didn't think I had actually broken anything, so I wrapped it up for a week or three to immobilize it somewhat. After that it's just been slowly getting stronger. No funny lumps or anything, so I guess I was right about no broken bones.

Just about good as new now, a month or two ago I started to be able to crack most of my knuckles again. Pain is gone. Still not quite at full strength if I'm squeezing something quite hard, but it's close.

I did talk to my friend's wife (a naturopath) who also figured nothing was probably broken, and told me how an injury like that would be treated, before deciding I could easily wrap the thing in a tensor bandage on my own and save myself a day in the hospital waiting room.

Not saying that was smart, what with free health care and all here.

Jeff

 

Haha, thanks Pete, I just hope it works.

Anyone know how hot a wire would have to get in order to to burn or melt through ABS pipe, by the way?

Jeff

 

Good, one less thing to worry about...

Jeff

 

I have, I would have loved to use that. But it's a finished attic, so the ABS pipe is behind a drywall ceiling and a bunch of insulation. I wasn't looking for reasons to tear all that out and redo it.

Jeff

 

Heh, I used a leaf blower to push the ball through, similar to using a vacuum to suck a parachute through I guess.

My heating wire isn't self regulating, but it is made by EasyHeat.

Thanks,

Jeff