Mark wrote:

And you found someone that actually admits to knowing the
construction codes from 1942? My guess is it is against the current
code, but probably wasn't against the old code. Which, in most
cases, unless the area he is actually working on is involved, you
should not need to bring it up to current code unless there is a real
safety concern.

He's worked on lots of houses from that era and so had perhaps been told by
an inspector who knew a bit of history, something like that, I don't suppose
he'd actually looked it up. That kind of pipe apparently wasn't supposed to
be used under the foundation presumably since it wouldn't have the lifespan
of iron and would be more likely to need replacement much earlier. I'd
guess it wasn't used for sanitary drains at all. Amazing it lasted this
long really. I thought maybe it was a wartime thing to deal with iron
shortages but apparently it goes back to the late 1800s. It hasn't been
used since the 1970s from what I could see. In any case all that pipe had
to go because it had failed and not being able to do laundry just wasn't an
option. I couldn't believe the tree roots in there, the pipe was just
packed with them.

I'll tell you one thing I learned from him, if I ever consider buying an
older home again a video check of the sewer lines will be on the list. We
had no problem that we knew of a month ago, but in the last week doing
laundry had become an adventure. Spending a couple of hundred bucks on a
video inspection of the sewer lines could save you thousands in repair costs
when buying a house with drains that are already in trouble, the owners just
don't know it yet.