I'm extremely impressed at your ability to even pretend that you're calm about this. If a poop hole is a necessary thing then I'm fairly certain there should be a cap on it somehow. I know there is a end of a large pipe in my downstairs bathroom and it has a cap on it. I worry about this pipe sometimes but most of the time I try to pretend it's not there. It's part of the structure. Someone put it there out of some sort of necessity. But it has a cap on it. I believe you deserve a cap on your basement hole. Nothing should be coming out of a hole like that especially not what's coming out of it. Find someone to help.
Hi, remodeling contractor here. You need to have this checked out by a plumber asap. The chance that sewer gas is coming up through that hole isn’t zero- they should be able to cap it somehow.
This seems like an obvious thing to say, but even the sewer gas coming up into your basement would be a health hazard, let alone the actual poop. I would have a lot of trouble taking "it's normal" for a final answer...
Like that's the reason that sinks and toilets have P-traps - to make sure the sewer gas doesn't come up!
I've read many houses there have a "Pittsburgh toilet in the basement, so in the event of a sewage issue causing flooding, it at least occurs on the lowest level of the house. Maybe your house had a Pittsburgh toilet and it was removed in a faulty move by a past homeowner, leading to your poop hole?
This is what I was coming in to ask about - is it a former Pittsburgh Potty hole? And can't they "just" put a new toilet on top of it? I imagine it is not actually that straightforward... being in a basement and with the plumbing presumably under concrete or something.
Oh my gosh, Brooke, this is totally unrelated, but I can't believe I forgot to tell you: we found a MOUSE. In our bird seed bucket at work! I wish I had taken a pic; he was so wee and cute. We took him out to the alley and set him free. (My boss was not thrilled. "Great. So he can come back in.") I hope he's living his best life. In the alternative, I hope that Paddy O'Furniture, my favorite alley cat, found him and that Paddy had a good snack and is living HIS best life.
I lived in a house once with a multi-year-long poop leak underneath the basement floor and it was only discovered because we started noticing a lot of sewer flies upstairs (exactly what they sound like). We called insurance, they fixed it, and we got a full basement remodel for free!
Oh, Brooke, I too have lived through this. Also with family in town, and when anyone had to go, we drove them to the Starbucks. (I can't believe they ever visited us again.) In our case, the sewer line was clogged by tree roots, so "it" backed up in that drain hole in basement. Plumber cleared the "obstruction" but it eventually happened again, so we ended up replacing the entire sewer line and haven't had any issues since. (And this happened 15 yrs. ago.) Let me know when you've fixed it, and I'll print us up some "I Survived The Poop Hole" t-shirts!
SAME HERE. We had the Roto-Rooter people come out and they put a long exciting camera snake down the hole, and could see a tree root, which they broke apart and removed (how? I have conveniently forgotten the details of how), and they recommended we call the city because they could see the tree roots had almost completely blocked off the sewer pipe past our property, in the street. Which I did, and they came immediately and did their tree-root-removing magic, and we've never had the problem again.
There SHOULD be a cap for it. You can get one at the hardware store. In ours (and I have no idea if this is normal), the hole is also the drain point of our basement, so if we're getting torrential rain, we loosen the cap a little, in case we get water in our basement, so it has a place to drain.
Somehow, the surprises that houses come with are never the good kind. We don't have anything as upsetting as a poop hole, but there are way too many things in our house that the previous owners did very amateur DIY on, and I try not to think too hard about them.
Hello, is this what we would call a septic tank in the UK? Or is it the entry to your sewer system? In other words, are you connected to a town sewer system or have a tank that fills and is emptied of "solids" (sometimes with a drain away for the "liquids")?
Oh wow, that is definitely a surprise!! Thankfully, my house (that I’ve been in less than a year) seems to be limited to an unnecessarily loud vent anytime the AC or heat comes on, those house centipede things that ick me out, ants appearing randomly and sporadically on the second floor, and a dishwasher connection that is precarious and loud. No poop holes, I don’t even want to know why that exists!
oh man thank you for resurfacing memories of the poop hole in our last house which flooded every time it rained - so so bad. It was a 100 year old bungalow in Kansas City, Kansas. But my mother in law lives in a less old house in west Chicago which also has a poop hole that sometimes floods - wild!
I’m back at my parents house in the country for a while after two decades of cities, I put mesh on my window for the bugs but there is still somehow a spider in my room 🫠
I'm extremely impressed at your ability to even pretend that you're calm about this. If a poop hole is a necessary thing then I'm fairly certain there should be a cap on it somehow. I know there is a end of a large pipe in my downstairs bathroom and it has a cap on it. I worry about this pipe sometimes but most of the time I try to pretend it's not there. It's part of the structure. Someone put it there out of some sort of necessity. But it has a cap on it. I believe you deserve a cap on your basement hole. Nothing should be coming out of a hole like that especially not what's coming out of it. Find someone to help.
Here, with bated breath, for the answers from the plumbers about why a poop hole is a necessity in these modern times. (And rooting for a solution!)
Hi, remodeling contractor here. You need to have this checked out by a plumber asap. The chance that sewer gas is coming up through that hole isn’t zero- they should be able to cap it somehow.
This seems like an obvious thing to say, but even the sewer gas coming up into your basement would be a health hazard, let alone the actual poop. I would have a lot of trouble taking "it's normal" for a final answer...
Like that's the reason that sinks and toilets have P-traps - to make sure the sewer gas doesn't come up!
Poop Hole would be an interesting band name. What music would they play??
Suddenly living in a very small fifth floor apartment doesn't seem so bad anymore.
I've read many houses there have a "Pittsburgh toilet in the basement, so in the event of a sewage issue causing flooding, it at least occurs on the lowest level of the house. Maybe your house had a Pittsburgh toilet and it was removed in a faulty move by a past homeowner, leading to your poop hole?
Yes! I too was thinking poorly decommissioned Pittsburgh Toilet!
This is what I was coming in to ask about - is it a former Pittsburgh Potty hole? And can't they "just" put a new toilet on top of it? I imagine it is not actually that straightforward... being in a basement and with the plumbing presumably under concrete or something.
Oh my gosh, Brooke, this is totally unrelated, but I can't believe I forgot to tell you: we found a MOUSE. In our bird seed bucket at work! I wish I had taken a pic; he was so wee and cute. We took him out to the alley and set him free. (My boss was not thrilled. "Great. So he can come back in.") I hope he's living his best life. In the alternative, I hope that Paddy O'Furniture, my favorite alley cat, found him and that Paddy had a good snack and is living HIS best life.
Paddy O'Furrniture is the most glorious cat name!
I lived in a house once with a multi-year-long poop leak underneath the basement floor and it was only discovered because we started noticing a lot of sewer flies upstairs (exactly what they sound like). We called insurance, they fixed it, and we got a full basement remodel for free!
Oh, Brooke, I too have lived through this. Also with family in town, and when anyone had to go, we drove them to the Starbucks. (I can't believe they ever visited us again.) In our case, the sewer line was clogged by tree roots, so "it" backed up in that drain hole in basement. Plumber cleared the "obstruction" but it eventually happened again, so we ended up replacing the entire sewer line and haven't had any issues since. (And this happened 15 yrs. ago.) Let me know when you've fixed it, and I'll print us up some "I Survived The Poop Hole" t-shirts!
SAME HERE. We had the Roto-Rooter people come out and they put a long exciting camera snake down the hole, and could see a tree root, which they broke apart and removed (how? I have conveniently forgotten the details of how), and they recommended we call the city because they could see the tree roots had almost completely blocked off the sewer pipe past our property, in the street. Which I did, and they came immediately and did their tree-root-removing magic, and we've never had the problem again.
There SHOULD be a cap for it. You can get one at the hardware store. In ours (and I have no idea if this is normal), the hole is also the drain point of our basement, so if we're getting torrential rain, we loosen the cap a little, in case we get water in our basement, so it has a place to drain.
It was the furniture thing that made me laugh. Sometimes my furniture bumps into me 😁.
Somehow I imagined it making a karate sound
Somehow, the surprises that houses come with are never the good kind. We don't have anything as upsetting as a poop hole, but there are way too many things in our house that the previous owners did very amateur DIY on, and I try not to think too hard about them.
Hello, is this what we would call a septic tank in the UK? Or is it the entry to your sewer system? In other words, are you connected to a town sewer system or have a tank that fills and is emptied of "solids" (sometimes with a drain away for the "liquids")?
Oh wow, that is definitely a surprise!! Thankfully, my house (that I’ve been in less than a year) seems to be limited to an unnecessarily loud vent anytime the AC or heat comes on, those house centipede things that ick me out, ants appearing randomly and sporadically on the second floor, and a dishwasher connection that is precarious and loud. No poop holes, I don’t even want to know why that exists!
oh man thank you for resurfacing memories of the poop hole in our last house which flooded every time it rained - so so bad. It was a 100 year old bungalow in Kansas City, Kansas. But my mother in law lives in a less old house in west Chicago which also has a poop hole that sometimes floods - wild!
I’m back at my parents house in the country for a while after two decades of cities, I put mesh on my window for the bugs but there is still somehow a spider in my room 🫠