Moving a cast iron soil pipe

[Wingedharpy]

Looking for some advice.
Our house is a Victorian terraced built in approx 1900.
We want to take out the dining room window and replace it with glass door(s) which open outwards.
In order to accommodate the door, we would need to move the soil pipe for the upstairs toilet, a couple of feet further along the wall.
Can this be done?
Is it a huge piece of work?
Is it likely to cost a fortune?
Any advice gratefully received.

I think it will depend on whether the sewer runs under where you would move it to. If it isn't then you've got excavation work, etc rather than just digging down and linking up with what's there. If it's still the original clay pipe underground they may need replacing.

Once you know the alternatives and costs you can weigh up whether it's going to be worth it or not. Would a single door be an option instead if it's going to be prohibitively expensive? Have any of your neighbours already done the same? They might have had experience of the same thing or had to compromise.

We moved ours - well we took the cast iron one out and changed its position and added a junction so we could add another loo. It had to be replaced in plastic. Thankfully ours was placed in a flower bed and was easy to move sideways to reconnect to the sewer junction below. It was a nasty messy job though to take down the old stack, Old cast iron doesn't like to come apart easily after sitting there for years.
We had ours done as part of a rebuild/. renovation of 3 bathrooms so couldn't tell you how much it cost individually.
Be aware you will also be left with a stripe in the brickwork where the old pipe meant the bricks weathered differently behind it over the years.

If you own the house, no big prob.

The iron pipe will go into the ground, at which level it will be attached to a brown glazed clay pipe, and a clay bend to turn it approximately horizontal. The clay pipe is probably cracked at the socket, and the clay bend is probably broken, so this is a good opportunity to dig out the broken parts and replace with new. You can run a new plastic pipe into these new parts (or into the old clay ones if, amazingly, yours are not broken). The old iron pipe can be broken up and scrapped. The red worms can be used as fishing bait.

Care has to be taken to prevent broken fragments of iron or clay falling into the drains where they may be difficult to remove. Hopefully you will have a manhole nearby.

Do you mean move the whole pipe along the guttering and then put a bend in it at some point? Would this point be underground? The underground work will need to be looked at by a professional as the pipe might be nowhere near where your pipe needs to go.

Just be aware that you would either have to replace the guttering joint in plastic - or replacement cast iron; and if any of the guttering joints are broken, they may have to be re-cast. We had to replace a downpipe and where it met the guttering in our 1880s house, and it took 3 months to get it sorted and it all had to go back to the original makers, and be recast from the original mouldings as they don't exist any more. Meanwhile, whilst they were faffing over the replacements, our front garden would flood as there was no down pipe and the water from 5 houses was all tipping into the garden.

Twas a fricking nightmare.

soil pipes are not attached to gutters.

if you are ever waiting for an iron replacement, you can use plastic pipes to tide you over.

if you are ever waiting for an iron replacement, you can use plastic pipes to tide you over.

Not if they don't fit you can't.

Thank you all for your input.
There is a manhole nearby (we discovered it and had a look in it fairly recently having lived here for a couple of decades!) so that seems good.
Nothing remotely lovely regarding the current pipework that's there at the moment so won't need any gorgeous mouldings - thank God.
Site access will be a nightmare, however, so may never find anyone willing to do the work.
We can but try.
Thank you.