Mother Nature is being sarcastic with me. I went into basement, looking for leaks from post-blizzard thaw currently underway. Instead, I find puddle in furnace room (full of nasty things I won't describe), and 2 rotted slits in the bottom center of soil line from toilet, one on either side of the wye leading up to the flange. Slits are very straight-edged, almost look like they were done with a router.
I don't have the tools or the time to try to fix this myself this week month, and my sweating skills suck anyway. Anybody wanna SWAG how much a plumber is gonna charge me to replace 3-4 feet of copper? Bronze wye under toilet, and another bronze wye under vent stack a foot away with a cleanout (blocked by a framed wall) on the back side. Will they be able to reuse these wyes? I figure it will be half a dozen joints overall (unless they need to get into the vertical runs), a coupling and maybe new wyes, and maybe even lifting the toilet and replacing the flange and starting over. Open ceiling with decent access to the pipes.
To pacify plumber, I'm gonna give him my whole plumbing punch list (half a dozen items, small to medium), and ask for an estimate for 'later' work. I also plan to keep saying 'cash' when I talk to him. I may eventually have all the basement drains replaced with PVC (which should resist my crappy well water better), but right now only looking for a good workmanlike spot repair, so I can get furnace room dried out and start scraping up the filth. At least I don't have to pay golden time for the work- stuff like this is why I insisted on a house with 2 bathrooms, and the one in the addition feeds into septic line outside the basement wall and five feet lower, so it is safe to use.
Any useful ideas or sympathy appreciated. Rest of line doesn't show any rot, but previous owner cleaned and shellacked it 6-7 years ago. Light tapping along bottom didn't produce any 'dead' sounds.