100 Front St, Ste 300, Worcester, MA, 01608
Basement Bathrooms and Bars in Worcester
We pull the cleanout and measure how low the house drain runs before quoting, cut the slab in one day, and set every pit sealed and vented.
You end up with a full bathroom or a bar sink downstairs that drains as reliably as the ones above it.
This group is the plumbing question. A shower, a toilet and a basin sitting below the level the house drains at, a bar sink and a dishwasher beside them, and the pump and the vent that lift the waste back up to the sewer.
The tiling, the lighting and the walls around all of it belong with full basement finishing.
Since 2012 we have cut something over a hundred and forty ejector pits into Worcester slabs, and about a third of those were for a bar sink rather than for a bathroom.
Most of it is a full bathroom, a toilet, a basin and a shower in a corner that has never had one. Then wet bars and kitchenettes, usually a sink, a small dishwasher and an under-counter fridge. Then pumps, added or replaced under fixtures somebody else fitted.
Anything with a toilet on it goes to a sealed basin with its own vent taken up to the roof line, never to an open laundry tray pump. A sealed pit keeps sewer gas in the pipe rather than in the room.
Two calls. A family adding a shower downstairs so that a teenager stops queueing at seven in the morning, and somebody building a bar who has just found out the sink cannot fall to the drain.
Ask for a free drain check at (508) 555-0147 and we will find out where your house drain sits. You will stop sending everybody upstairs and start using the room you built.
The pit, the slab and the finishing are ours. The connections themselves are made by a licensed plumber we bring in, who pulls that permit.
Services
For the family queueing at one bathroom at seven in the morning, and for the finished basement that still sends everybody back up the stairs. A bathroom down here starts under the slab rather than at the fixtures, so the cleanout comes off and the drain is measured before a layout is drawn.
For the person building a room to watch a game in who has just found out the sink cannot fall to the drain, and for a suite that needs somewhere to make coffee. A bar sink can share the bathroom pit where the two sit close together. Put it at the far end instead and it wants a pump and a vent of its own.
For the pump somebody else fitted that is now failing, the pit with a lid laid loosely over it, and the downstairs bathroom that smells whenever it runs. Anything with a toilet on it belongs on a sealed basin vented in its own right, never on an open tray pump, and that is usually what has gone wrong.
More basements can drain without a pump than the trade tends to assume.
Where the house drain leaves below the slab and there is fall left in it, the fixtures tie straight in. We find that out by pulling the cleanout and measuring down to the invert, and where it is low enough there is no pump, no pit and nothing to fail.
Where the drain leaves above the floor, or the fall runs out before it reaches the room, a sealed ejector pit is the only honest answer. Fitted without one, you get a shower that stands full every time somebody runs a bath above it.
We measure it on the visit and say which, including when it is the cheaper one. If your drain sits low enough to take the fixtures by gravity, the quote comes back without a pump in it, and you can lift the cap and check us.
Cast iron cut back to sound metal, plastic banded onto it, never a rubber boot on its own.
The pit is a sealed basin bedded in crushed stone, not a hole with a lid laid over it. The pump handles solids rather than gray water only, sits on a float you can lift and test by hand, and the lid is gasketed and bolted so that it can come off again.
Every pit is vented in its own right, carried up into the existing stack above the highest fixture, so the pump is not pulling the traps in the room dry each time it runs.
Where old cast iron is opened up, it is cut back to sound metal with a snap cutter and joined with a shielded, banded coupling. The discharge line gets a check valve with a union above it, so the valve can be changed without cutting the pipe out.
Call and we will lift the cleanout cap, measure how low the house drain runs and tell you whether you need a pump at all.
(508) 555-0147The fixtures cost what fixtures cost. What moves the number is the concrete under them, how far the waste has to travel, and whether it can fall or has to be lifted.
Which of these bite is settled by lifting one cleanout cap and drilling a test hole, not over the phone, and the concrete is quoted separately from the plumbing. Get a free quote
Four to seven weeks on a whole basement, and the noise and the dust are over inside the first two of them.
Call and you get a callback the same day, then a free visit to measure up and find where water gets in.
Get a free quoteThe room you add downstairs changes how the house is described before anybody walks in.
No published remodeling report puts a resale percentage on a basement bathroom on its own. The studies price a bath remodel upstairs, where a bath was there already, and a fixture added below grade is not the same job.
What can be checked is how a house gets listed. Bathroom count is a field a buyer filters on, and one downstairs counts the same as one upstairs, a full bath as a full and a powder room as a half. That is worth more than any percentage anybody could quote you for the tile.
The decisions that hold that value are the ones under the floor. A sealed and vented pit, a pump that can be lifted out and changed, and a shower that was flood tested before it was tiled.
The street sewer sits high on the older hills, the stacks are ninety year old cast iron, and there is granite a foot under some slabs. Three things that decide how waste leaves.
Six basement bathrooms and bars finished over the last couple of years, with the town each one is in. Every pit on this list is sealed and separately vented.
Full bath cut into a 1920s slab
Greendale
The house drain left above the floor, so a sealed pit went in, the shower trap sat in a trench, and the slab went back level in a day.
Wet bar with its own pump
Shrewsbury
The bar sat at the far end from the stack, so it took a second pit and a vent run the length of the ceiling to reach the roof line.
Powder room under the stairs
Auburn
There was no room for a pit and no wish to break concrete, so a macerating unit went in behind the toilet and the slab stayed down.
Cast iron stack cut back and joined
Millbury
The original stack was sound above and soft at the base, so we cut back to good metal and banded new pipe onto it rather than saddling it.
Ejector pump replaced in place
Holden
The basin was sound and the pump had seized. The lid came off, the pump came out on its rails, and the check valve was changed with it.
Tiled shower over a trenched trap
Grafton
The floor had to fall to a trap set below the slab, so the trench went in first and the membrane was flood tested before any tiling.
Rated 5 out of 5
Water across the floor by the stairs every March. They ran a drain along the fieldstone side and set the pit in the low corner. First spring in nine years with a dry slab.
Rated 5 out of 5
The town would not sign off on my son's bedroom without a proper egress window. Digging the well ran two days over because of ledge, they told me that the morning it happened, and it passed first time.
Rated 5 out of 5
We only meant to do the one corner for a desk. It ended up with the boiler and the washer framed into their own room, which I would not have thought of, and the panel by the shutoff was their idea too.
If you would rather hear it from somebody whose basement we plumbed, call and we will ask them.
Get a free quoteFAQs
Questions people ask about basement plumbing
Almost anywhere, and where it goes changes the price rather than the answer. Against the wall the stack runs down is cheapest, because the pipe runs are short. At the far end it wants a longer vent and more trenching, and both of those are worth knowing before the layout is fixed.
Yes, and it often should, because two pits in one basement is a pump you did not need. What cannot share is a pit sized for a basin with a washing machine added later, since a machine dumps its whole drum at once. Tell us what will end up on it and it gets sized for that.
We do, and the membrane under it is ours as well. The waterproofing goes in, gets flood tested and is signed off by us before a single tile is set, because a leak found later means the tile comes off again. The plumbing connections are made by the plumber we bring in.
A few hours on the day the connections are made, and it is planned for a morning rather than sprung on you. Everything else, the cutting, the pit and the pipe runs, happens with the house on. The drains are the part that shuts down, and that is usually one afternoon.
A great deal unless it is controlled, so the saw runs wet and the area is sheeted and put under negative pressure with a fan out of a window. Expect noise for a day and grit for two. Anything that has to stay clean should come out of the basement before we start.
Only for the first hour, so we can agree where the pit lands and where the fixtures sit. After that a key and a way in is enough. The one thing we need on site is a working outlet and a tap, and if the water is being turned off that day somebody should know about it.
Plastic waste for everything new, banded onto whatever is already in the ground. Copper or plastic supply depending on what the house runs, and the choice is made to match rather than to argue with it. The pit and the lid are molded, and the fixings on the lid are stainless.
Years rather than decades, and it is a wearing part in the way a boiler pump is. The lid is bolted rather than sealed shut and the check valve has a union over it so that both can be changed in an hour. Lift the lid once a year and pour a bucket in to watch it run.
The pump stops and the basin holds what is already in it, which is a few flushes rather than none. Stop using the fixtures until the power is back, the same as with a well pump. Where an outage is a regular thing, the pit can be wired to a small backup unit instead.
Yes, and it needs to go outside rather than into the ceiling void, which is where a lot of them end up. Below grade there is no window doing the job, so the fan is the only thing moving moisture out, and a run that discharges into a joist bay puts it into the floor above.
Not until the water is dealt with, because a wet slab under a new tiled floor is a problem you have then buried. That work is waterproofing and moisture control, and it goes first. It is usually a perimeter drain and a sump rather than anything dramatic.
No. The slab is a floor rather than a structural part of the foundation, and the cut is closed and repoured level. If a wall is bowing or a footing is settling, that is a structural engineer rather than us. An opening in a slab can also move a radon reading, which is a radon contractor's measurement.
Basements in Worcester since 2012, and every call gets a callback the same day.
Worcester Basement Pros turns unfinished basements into rooms people use, in Worcester and out through Shrewsbury, Auburn, Holden, Millbury and Grafton. Framing and insulation, floors, ceilings and lighting, waterproofing and sump work, egress windows, basement bathrooms, wet bars and in-law suites.
Why give the basement to Worcester Basement Pros?
Tell us what you want the basement to do and what it does when it rains, and we will come and measure it. Call (508) 555-0147 and you get a callback the same day. If what you have is a bowing wall, a cracked pier or a radon reading, that is an engineer or a radon contractor rather than us, and we will say so instead of boarding over it.
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office@worcesterbasementpros.com
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100 Front St, Ste 300, Worcester, MA, 01608
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