Bogus Plumbing Advice for Dummies

splicing sewer line

A couple of months ago we found some pretty bogus instructions for splicing into a run of PVC pipe, and gave out not one but two DotD awards to the freelancers responsible for those contributions to the the stupidification of the internet. The sad part is that those two weren't the only botched sets of instructions penned by freelancing English majors who'd never tried plumbing in their lives... no we're back again with yet another award. This time it's "creative writing" grad Steve Sloane and "How to Attach a New Pipe to the Main Sewer Line" at HomeSteady.com.

Like his predecessors on the award stage, Sloane failed to think through his assignment, running straight to instructions for assembling a run of PVC pipe. He even opened with a questionable statement, explaining that,

"Most household sewer lines are made of either ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) or PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) plastic."

Clearly, Steve's never seen the cast-iron plumbing common in homes built before WW2. In other words, he's already factually in the red. He then prattles on a while, telling readers that,

"The home's main sewer line... runs from the basement/buildup area underground to the city sewer, or to a private septic tank."

That's not very useful for the millions of houses built on slabs, is it... and then there's this weird construction:

"...individual sewer lines from your water fixtures connect to the main sewer line via a connecting coupling. This coupling is the same diameter as the main sewer line, and has a side spout that fits to the sewer pipe running to the water fixture."

A "coupling" with a "spout"? Interesting... Oh, and the "spout" is not necessarily the same diameter as the sewer main – in fact, it rarely is.

Once he got that bullshit out of his system, Steve charged ahead with his "instructions":

1. "Use a circular saw to cut through the main sewer line."
2. "Take out the 2-inch pipe section [you just cut]."
3. "Brush PVC primer [and cement on] both sawed pipe ends... [and] the inside ends of a PVC connecting coupling."
4. "Squeeze the connecting coupling between the main line's sawed pipe ends, pushing the pipe ends into each end of the coupling..."

What this idiot doesn't seem to realize is that 1) the 2-inch gap would occlude a third of the diameter of a wye to connect a new toilet, which code says must have a 3-inch ID. More importantly, like his cohorts before him, Sloane does not seem to understand that you can't "squeeze" a 3½" rigid pipe into a 2-inch gap in pipe that's already set in place. Therein lies madness...

So, like Billy Brainard and Laurie Brown before him, Sloane's ignorance has doomed him to a life with a Dumbass of the Day award on his resume. Pbbbbt.

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