In floor drains in the arc

Yesterday while I was in a meeting all day, Ben and Jay did a lot of experimenting and work on the drains in the arc. When we poured the floor we put in 1 1/2 inch pvc pipe just under the concrete. When we got around to cutting a groove into them, we ran into a few problems.

The pipe moved when the concrete was poured, which made the groove not line up with the pipe. Next time we'll fasten it down better. The first groove we cut had to be widened because of that making an ugly inch wide chasm of a drain. Luckily we won't be looking at that one since it's at the bottom of a covered trench. (see below)

The thin concrete on top of the pipe cracked a bunch. The second groove we tried to cut ended up throwing all sorts of chips up making an ugly mess. In addition, doing one long continuous groove allowed the pipe to vibrate, which allowed pebbles and grit to get between the pipe and the wall, which caused the groove in the pipe to get squeezed closed in some places.

To fix that, our boys stuck cardboard shims in the groove and then filled the rest with concrete patch. It was very difficult smoothing the concrete patch.

It worked, though, and when the cardboard was removed, the drain grooves looked like this.

This was better, but still wasn't smooth and pretty.

On the third drain, in the second trench, the just did plunge cuts into the pipe. This has the advantage of not allowing the pipe to flex and get pebbles behind it. It also looks better because you don't have the one long cut that inevitable isn't perfectly straight. If these short plunges aren't perfectly in line, it's harder to tell.

The fourth drain was one that had many cracks. This time they spackled the cracks up with concrete pat

ch first, let it dry, and then did the plunge cuts. That worked nicely.

They followed the same approach on the last one, too.

In the future we'd modify the approach in a few ways.

1. Put chicken wire or hardware cloth over the pipes to keep the concrete from cracking
2. Cut the grooves before the concrete fully sets - like the next day after pouring.

Now we'll see if the grooves work well for draining and not clogging too bad.