A homeowner documents contractor Mini Pepin fixing a crushed drain pipe under the garage stairs that caused water pooling and foundation cracks. Over two days, they excavate the three-inch concrete slab, install a new swamp drain system, re-grade the slope, and pour fresh concrete for a level, properly drained garage floor.
You gotta grip it and you gotta rip it. So this has been absolutely nuts. We moved in on Friday, today is Monday. I knew that we had some work to do because there's a big drainage issue right outside the, uh, the front garage slope driveway. Basically what's happening is the drain pipe is going underneath the stairs to our house, and because the cement settled, it crushed the pipe. So it's not draining in front of our garage, which is creating a lot of these cracks and so on in the foundation. So what do I know? I know nothing. And I saw a buddy of mine's garage, who, uh, it was done by Mini Pepin. So they came to take a look at it, and they are going to be preparing and repairing the drain right in front of our garage doors, and they're going to be recementing, resurfacing all of the garage floor. This is about to be a journey. I'm going to take you before, during, and after. I'm pumped. It's a lot of work, but they said it's only going to take about 2 or 3 days, so that's crazy. It's not much, it's just sometimes there's little rocks out the size of that machine. Really? Yeah, and here it was fine. Not much. Crazy. Your new level is the new laser, the red laser there. Wow, crazy. You know, 100% that is— right on. Wow, so sick. Look at your new floor. Crazy. So we're going to— so it's going to be higher. Yeah, so that helps us a lot too. And we're only going from the outside here an inch lower than this line here, right? That's where you have it. Space for that new pit. Oh yeah, it's nice and big. It's the new boy. Wow, it is a new pit. The concept is that it has to— this has to be higher this, and this has to be higher than this, so it all just flows down and drains out to the city that way. There you have it, day 1 done. All right, it's day 2 of Garage Files. Yesterday they absolutely crushed and dug up everything that we had in here. Turns out we only had 3 inches of cement laying on top of just simply gravel. Turns out that is not a good thing, so they completely cleared that out. We also had pyrite underneath, so they cleared that out too. They laid new gravel, then they put this membrane on top of the gravel, then they put more gravel, and now they fixed the garage pit. So we've got a brand new garage pit. They're fixing all the plumbing to make sure that the slope from the driveway goes down to the garage pit, down to the main drain, out The drain in front of the garage, it was completely chewed up, a small little piece. We're putting a swamp drain that goes all along the whole thing with concrete instead of asphalt right there, so it's way stronger. Then they're gonna lay plastic over this gravel, then they're gonna lay a grid over this gravel to pour the concrete on to make sure it stays straight, and then they're pouring the concrete and we're gonna have a new garage. And it already looks way better than it did yesterday, so that's amazing.
