I recently added to some plumbing to an established sewer drain line in a garage that was only running grey water. There was a stack for the toilet that was never used. This will all be added to a tank at a later date and I was adding lines for a sink and washing machine. I capped the outflow and filled the line to test for leaks and it ran out at approx 1 gal/minute. We got someone to run a camera up the pipe and could find no obvious holes. We were suspecting rats as they had used this pipe as a secret entry to the building but we could not see any evidence of them chewing on the pipes below grade. I disconnected the previous sinks to isolate my new plumbing and the 50′ of 3″ pipe that runs under the slab and outside. My work is not leaking so it seems to be the established pipe under the slab. Filled up it is about 18 gallons and this 1/2 drained in about 10-12 minutes. This seems to be a large flow of water for a crack in the pipe but we could see no holes. I really don’t want to rip up the whole line to lay new pipe. Is this kind of leak common?
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An option is to get the pipe lined, generally with something like an epoxy-coated fiberglass "sock". This is done by pros, but is relatively quick and not outrageously expensive for such a simple configuration.
thanks I will look into it. I'm still curious as to what and where. Is this kind and amount of leak common?
I dug up the pipe outside. Previous installer decided to extend beyond the building using a length of pvc with no glue then abs using a ring clamp to force the two together. Bone headed and easy to fix. thanks for your advice anyway.
R