# Hole in soil pipe, advice needed



## DTR (8 Oct 2012)

Greetings all,

We have just discovered a small hole in our soil pipe near ground level. The hole is about 1" across by 1/4" high. The pipe runs outside the house and at this point is terracotta. 







Does anyone have any advice on how to fix this, or should we just get the lot replaced? Thanks


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## Phil Pascoe (8 Oct 2012)

A bit of plasterer's scrim tape and plaster it over with waterproof floor tile adhesive?


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## petermillard (8 Oct 2012)

Is that a cast iron stack? Maybe cut a small section of plastic soil pipe and glue it on with some kind of MS Polymer adhesive? Or with polyweld if it's a pvc stack, obviously.


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## Lons (8 Oct 2012)

It's repairable but whatever you use, make sure the pipe is scrupulously clean.

I repaired a clay soil pipe bend which had a small hole / large crack for my brother many years ago using car body glassfibre and it has never budged. He caught it with a spade whilst digging - the dozy so and so :roll: 

All I did was carefully clean the area and slightly roughened it using coarse wet and dry. I then covered the hole /crack with g/f bandage and applied resin / hardener. I actually put some body filler over it later to improve the appearance but it didn't need it really.

Bob

edit:

Forgot. - I advised a mate to use the same method last year to repair a cast iron rain downcomer on his business premises.
He's not the best at DIY but managed and to the best of my knowledge, its still watertight.


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## DTR (8 Oct 2012)

Thanks for the suggestions, much appreciated. I think I'll go with the glass fibre idea, I was thinking of something along the same lines myself.

We recently had a fence replaced close to the pipe; I think the damage was probably caused then.


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## pip1954 (8 Oct 2012)

hi 4 to 1 sand and cement sorted.
pip


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## DTR (9 Oct 2012)

An update for anyone who might be interested... I took down the recently installed fence this morning in order to get at the pipe. It turned out that the fence was hiding a lot more damage. I have contacted the fencing company and they have accepted liability, so hopefully it will repaired properly without too much hassle.


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## No skills (9 Oct 2012)

Good result.


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## Lons (10 Oct 2012)

DTR":3ge00t6q said:


> An update for anyone who might be interested... I took down the recently installed fence this morning in order to get at the pipe. It turned out that the fence was hiding a lot more damage. I have contacted the fencing company and they have accepted liability, so hopefully it will repaired properly without too much hassle.



Hi Dave

As they have accepted liability, I would insist that it is fixed properly and suggest you take photos of all the damage.

They really need to cut the pipe above and below the damage, removing any concrete or mortar surrounding the pipe if neccessary and fit a sleeve or proper joint adapter. Slip adapters are available if movement of the pipe is restricted. Flexible adapters also but without checking, I'm not sure if these are UV stabilised.

Whilst I would be very happy to use a method such as glassfibre on my own property, I would never do so on a customers!

If I as suspect, they want to use their own labour to do the job, they may well not have the knowledge or skills to do this and could very easily make matters worse. Clay soil pipes are very easily broken, especially old ones.

Bob


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## Eric The Viking (10 Oct 2012)

If it's leaked for a while and the groundl around the pipe has become sodden and it's clay or similar, the pipe run can sag so that lots of joints will leak (happened to our main drain). Since you can't dry the soil to make it stable, the fix requires some heavy ballast (chippings below and around the repaired pipe to stop it moving again), but plastic is preferable every time. You can get flexible couplers to go back to clay (salt glazed) at the end of the run if you can't eliminate it entirely.

I really wouldn't let them skimp, and, since they must have known (or had a good clue) that they damaged it in the first place, I wouldn't trust them either,


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