Drain Flies

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i could get all technical, but i wont.....

how a vent works...put a straw in a glass of water

put your finger over the end of the straw, pick up the straw, water stays in the straw...no vent

take finger off end of straw....thats a vent.


a p trap, as you can see, has a water seal, this seal keeps out odor /methaine gas/ flies etc

each fixture has its own vent and p trap
 
Vents are connected on the waste side of the p trap as opposed to the fixture side. They typically run up to the attic, connect up there and then up and out through the roof in a much larger pipe. Some vents can and will go up over and down to connect into another pipe using it as a vent. There are also wet vents and automatic air vents. For your purposes, you need to fix what was done incorrectly by opening the wall up and replacing a couple/few tiles. You don't need to tear apart your whole bathroom. A repair like this would typically take about 4 to 6 hours if you have all the parts on hand and voila!

No more flies.

Summer is coming; it will only get worse.
 
do not know what is on the other side of that wall...you may be able to cut sheet rock in a bedroom or closet. instead of tile.

work it from the other side

Thanks for the drawings, clear now, the other side of the wall is the same tile but their is also a toilet there in the way.
 
Vents are connected on the waste side of the p trap as opposed to the fixture side. They typically run up to the attic, connect up there and then up and out through the roof in a much larger pipe. Some vents can and will go up over and down to connect into another pipe using it as a vent. There are also wet vents and automatic air vents. For your purposes, you need to fix what was done incorrectly by opening the wall up and replacing a couple/few tiles. You don't need to tear apart your whole bathroom. A repair like this would typically take about 4 to 6 hours if you have all the parts on hand and voila!

No more flies.

Summer is coming; it will only get worse.
Yup I see that as well, and thanks to everyone that has contributed to this post.
 
Today I finally got around to getting that tile off, maybe an hours work. The more I look at it the more I wonder if I did not bother to seal the plug at the front of the pipe as can be seen in the picture, to be honest I had forgotten that I had even plugged that hole with the PVC fixture.

I wonder if these flies are somehow starting out so minute as to weedle there way through the threads of that plug that may or may not have any sealer on it?

I do not see any issues with the silicone caulk that I first used to seal the new incoming pipe but I will of course address that while I am in there.

My thought is to get a long narrow strip of elastic rubber, wind it tight around both pipes and use some hose clamps to keep it in place.

That should give me a long lasting repair and then I would not have to cut out more tile and have to deal with trying to cut a section of the iron pipe out.

One more thing Id like to add that may help someone reading this, I did notice ( but had forgotten ) that when we turned the A/C on in the house after my re-model job a faint poor odor......I recognized right away where the smell was most likely coming from but since we seldom use the whole house/central A/C it was never an issue

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dude,,,,where does the ac drain to?

if it drains some where in the house. there is a ptrap

if the unit is not used, the trap will dry up/evaperate

and the children of the flies could be coming in rat dar

A/C drains to the outside of home via PVC pipe
 
Still on-going, what I have done to prove too myself where the issue was coming from ......I taped the areas in which I had altered.

Figured that I would find flies stuck to the tape even though upon careful inspection I had zero reason too believe that my silicone patchwork had failed.

Sure enough tons of flies and yet NOTHING stuck to the tape around my mediocre joints.

Decided this evening to climb into the attic and was expecting to find this pipe with some sort of break in it up there, I have been seeing dozens and dozens of flies, they are everywhere, has to be a major rupture somewhere.

Nothing to be found in the attic.

Climbed back down and again contemplated that the line I had run behind the wall using PVC must have an occlusion somewhere in one of the joints allowing the flies to escape, began accepting the fact that I would have to remove the wall again and start all over.

Make a long story shorter I have found the issue! Looking at the pipe thru the missing tile hole at the 2 o'clock position there is a rust area about 8-10 inches long as can be seen in the picture, hard to photograph cause its hard to get to, I had noticed it before and had poked at it feeling for soft spots but this time I used a small screwdriver and some force.

Sure enough the screwdriver penetrated. Then my pinky ( partial ) went thru.

Prob. not hard to imagine what followed after I removed my pinky.

Yep drain flies, waiting in line to escape.

Area is approx 3/8 wide at most, only the very center being soft.

Id like to understand what caused that, lived in the home maybe 10 years or so and it is obvious that this has been a problem a very long time, just constant rain pouring down the pipe maybe over the years caused this issue?

Now I need to figure out a way to patch this, I am sure the proper way to fix this would be to remove what is necessary of the wall, cut out the damaged section of pipe which is most probably even below the foundation and replace with new.

I would imagine that I could patch it somehow though and it would most likely outlast me. Would be nice to somehow neutralize the rust on the inside of the pipe at the least but I know of no way.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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Maybe no-one is interested to follow this topic any longer but I am adding to it cause hopefully it will help someone down the road.

Taped up the fracture that I mentioned above. I wanted to be certain that was the entire issue. It was NOT! Still the flies.

Been looking carefully over the past week for more problems and wondering if the flies I was seeing were maybe just left overs. They were not. See pictures below.

Id like to know if there is a way to neutralize/strengthen what remains of the pipe, I had to cut the pipe off at about 4 inches above ground level cause there are other pipes surrounding the base and I cant get into digging up the concrete/entire bathroom floor to chase rusty pipes.

Surprisingly what I show below is just crumbling, what is left above the floor is pretty bad but not quite crumbling, the top is pretty bad, two inches down it gets a little better and further down even better but its all still pretty bad.

I would like to treat whats left and then of course I plan to get the right rubber deals and add some PVC.

No reason I cut it so high up in the attic except I didnt want to have to try and rig up something to hold what I planned to leave within the roof ( which is about a foot of pipe at this point.

Any help would be appreciated.

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Id also like to know what caused this? Is this typical of these iron pipes? Are all the rest in the house the same possibly?

Nothing would get this high up except rain water and why the straight vein?
 
Hate to say it but Im kinda hoping this will be my last post here for a while. A long while I hope :)

What I ended up doing was getting an adapter/collar ( 3 inch cause 3 inch vent pipe ) ( cant remember the technical name but it could join two pipes together by fitting inside each pipe for a flush exterior finish )

Unfortunately PVC sizes and cast sizes are a bit different so I had to do some grinding on one end of adapter ( just a little ) so one end of the collar would slip down inside of what I had left sticking out of the floor, I siliconed this pretty heavily before inserting down into the pipe.

From there I just built upward using PVC.

Surprisingly the bit of iron pipe sticking out was not nearly as fragile as I had initially though. I saw no more crumbling and even did try to break some off just to see what would happen.

Not to take any chances I built up a 6 inch high temporary dam at the base and filled in this with cement.

I do not believe I will have any more fly issues. Im going to not put the tile back though for a week or so just to be certain although I am sure its not necessary.

Started this at 4 AM this morning and finished at about 5.15 but most of that time was spent driving all over creation looking for parts and getting some advice from people concerning the situation.

Id really like to get some professional opinions on the few questions above so look forward to that.

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