I recently purchased my first home and plan on doing some work come spring.

The house was built in 1954 and there was a up and down garage added on in the 70's. The floor drain top garage is lead and used to run a pipe into a tank under the capped garage below it. The drain apparently clogged and rusted horribly so the previous owner cut the pipe at the elbow in the capped garage and covered the drain in the top garage.

This is unacceptable for me, especially after squeegeeing water out of my garage every other day this winter. I would like to remove the current drain and replace it and run the drain across the ceiling in the capped garage to drain outside.

My question is how do I remove the current drain and what do I replace it with? (PVC, Pex, etc.)

Thanks.

 

I'm trying to understand what an "up and down garage" is; do you mean that you have two garages on two different levels but in close proximity to each other?

I seriously doubt that the upper garage had "lead piping" on the floor drain. If it had been lead it would never have rusted. Galvanized steel piping I would believe and it most assuredly would rust, especially if the water came from snow and ice melt and they use salt on your roads.

Not having a clue as to what you have I can't make any specific recommendations on how to repair your floor drain but I will state that either PVC or ABS drain piping is what I would use. One of these will be more common in your area and that one is the one I would use. Both are relatively easy to use with glued (solvent welded) fittings and both are cut with a common hack saw or carpenter's saw.

Pictures of what you have will help to let me or one of the other members to see what you have and to make further recommendations. Pictures should be clear, in focus and well-lighted. Both close ups and from a distance are necessary to visualize the entire job.

 

The garages are stacked. They were added on the side of the house, one off the main floor, the other off the basement, right beneath the other. The drain on the main floor garage had a pipe into another drain in the garage below it, but has been cutoff.

You are probably right about the galvanized steel. I'm just unsure how to removed the current drain from the garage floor.

 

Is your garage floor concrete? If so, then your going to have the expected difficulty of chiseling the old drain out of the floor and installing a new one or figure out how to attach to if from below with new piping.

 

Yes, the floor is concrete. I contemplated keeping the original drain, but it is severely rusted and I don't want to have issues with the surrounding concrete down the road.

So in order to remove the current drain I would have to chisel the concrete around it? What are the risks in this procedure?

 

Do you have access to the drain from the ceiling in the garage below? If so you can see what hazards might be in the area. It's a basic though difficult job. Before starting I would go buy the new drain you would like to install in the floor. As long as you are chiseling you might as well make sure the hole fits the new drain.

First I would bang on the drain itself with a cold chisel or rotary hammer set to chisel. Trying to break the old steel drain free without damaging the concrete. You can also try hammering up from below to pop the old drain out. If you're lucky with some work it will eventually pop out leaving most of the concrete intact. If you're really lucky the new drain will be close to fitting in the same space. You want good concrete to support the flange of the new drain. If it fit's pretty close an industrial caulk/adhesive can be used to glue it in place and seal to prevent leaks. If there ends up being a lot of space to fill it may need to be mortared in place.

 

If Dane's suggestions fail I'd try grinding off the face of the drain with an angel grinder so only the pipe is left then using a Sawzall to cut the remaining pipe length wise and knock the strips of pipe out with a cold chisel.

A fancy way after down to just the pipe would be use a core dill just a bit larger then the OD of the pipe to drill a new hole.

 

Thanks for the advice. I do have access to the drain from the ceiling in the garage below. I will attempt to break the drain free from below.