Sewer
April 24th, 2006
Heather wrote about the aftermath of the first dig. Since our homeowner’s insurance won’t cover any part of this repair (damage can’t be shown to be sudden and accidental) it looks like we are on our own devices.
After we got our toilet back Thursday night, we’ve been stranded with the hole in the driveway while the necessary permits are gotten to do dig number two, the street excavation. We can bathe, run the dishwasher, run the washer and flush the toilet, but damn that hole is stinky.
They are cutting the street up as I write this, making a huge racket right during Leta’s nap:
Tomorrow is the dig and then we’ll know if the city has to pay or we do. In Salt Lake City, the homeowner owns the line to the y-joint on the city sewer line. We learned that our existing lateral sewer line is made up of two feet sections of petrified terra cotta. The jet guy who was here for 12 hours on Wednesday ran a camera through the line and showed us where the problems were. The camera revealed at least a half dozen joints where roots were visible, even after 12 hours of cables, cables with blades, cables with whip ends and 300 gallons of water, 175 of which we supplied to the tank of the jet.
To just fix the existing problem is 66% of the total cost of us replacing our sewer line. We’re replacing the sewer line because we don’t want to have to deal with the aging line and the root issue that plagues it. Without a line replacement, we’d still be looking at thousands of dollars and the problem wouldn’t be 100% fixed. The long term fix is to do it when the expensive holes are already dug and no more street or home excavation is needed.
Key learnings for owners of older homes:
- At least once a year, pay a rooter to come out and BLADE your sewer line. Don’t just cable it. Blade it. The blade will cut through roots and allow for chemical treatments to curtail root growth into the line.
- If you are going to stay in the house and you continually have issues with the drains, get it bladed and then have them camera the line. It’s expensive, but a fraction of the cost of a line replacement and you can give yourself time to save up or figure out how you might pay for any damages or replacements to/of the line.
- Put bacteria down the drains on a regular basis to break up any organic material in the line.
- If you have ANY backflow or toilets that won’t drain, don’t use any water and call a rooter service immediately. We were fortunate that we didn’t flood more than the disgusting photos I already published here.
The worst part of this is that for several days, we were in camel mode and this morning, right during another camera run of the line, Heather and I were both called by nature. Typical. o
April 24th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
i think the orange spray paint arrow is my favorite. lol. good luck with all this crap- har har
April 24th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
god. good luck.
April 24th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
I’m going to guess, since I’m a parent too, the worst part of your day is when Leta does not sleep.
I know whenever we have construction crews in the neighborhood and it would wake up my daughter, I would want to go outside and pay them to be quiet for an hour.
Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it! And so does my sucky plumbing system.
April 24th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
I like that you still link to Heather. As if she needs more traffic and as if people didn’t already know who you were talking about.
April 24th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
I’m so sorry you guys are going through this.
We just found out that the people who bought our house just over a year ago are going through the same thing. I can’t help but feel a combination of relief and guilt.
April 24th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Whew! Looks like they at least spared the tulips!
April 24th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
You two now have the house on poo corner.
April 24th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
I about choked on my pretzels when I moused over the arrow picture…fisting indeed. Plumbing problems are just awful. We have an old, old house and are going to have to replace the septic system. There is a particularly “fragrant” patch of mushy lawn…
Good luck with the city. I hope they at least give you a kiss first.
April 24th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
I think it is smart to use the camera.
City water is a PITA.
April 24th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
So if the problem is determined to be on the “city side” of the y-joint, are you then off the financial hook? If that’s the case and if I were in your shoes, I’d be really tempted to maybe “work on” that city side… in the middle of the night. And with a sledgehammer.
April 24th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Man that sucks. Isn’t it great to find out your homeowner’s insurance is useless? I hope the fault lies with the city.
April 24th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
Oy. Best of luck.
Your site looks amazing though!
April 24th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
Is Leta having nightmares about the Komatsu backhoe yet? Dude, I’m scared of it, and I’m on the other side of the country. I’m paticularly haunted by the pic of it next to those lovely tulips…as if it were planning to eat them, somehow. And taking a sledgehammer to the city’s side of the Y-split sounds like a fantastic idea, estella. Not even to make them foot the repair bill. Just for funsies!
April 24th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
Put a spotlight on that camera and you should be able to see the entire GOP dancing in there and some NRA members doing the back vocals. O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh are making out in a corner, under a root. What a shit hole!
A similar problem happened to us in Philly, old pipes, too narrow, basement flooded…
Best of luck, this sucks.
Alex
April 24th, 2006 at 7:57 pm
Utter sympathy.
http://www.sarahatlee.com/blacklagoon.htm
April 24th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Heather did a great job on your site. Thanks SO MUCH for passing on those tips. You may have saved some or many of your readers (and Heathers) the same headache. Seriously.
Sounds like bullshit that it isn’t the responsibility of the city or town. My four year old son recently discovered an old manhole without a lid on it. He’d been telling me about a hole with poop in it but I wasn’t alarmed. Until he actually walked me through the woods to show me.
I called our town and they were practically pissing themselves. Think of the law suit. I’m just glad my son was smart enough not to go in.
April 24th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
I really feel your pain. We have a rental house and a couple weeks ago, we had a sewer issue. My husband had taken off the toilet to snake it and sewage backed up all over his shoes. Eww. After finding the only plumber in Seattle available on a Sunday, we were lucky to find it was not roots; it just needed to be snaked to the sewer line. Not the main sewer issue that you have.
Is that other fix you mentioned trenchless sewer line replacement?
April 24th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
Shit. It’s one thing to read about it, but quite another to actually *see* the misery with photographic evidence. Jesus, this is no joke.
I’m pretty sure that this means that Hubs isn’t going to sign off on the slew of 1900-built homes I’ve had my eye on in Massachusetts.
April 24th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
Dear Mother of Santa Claus! That sucks ass…. and not in a good way.
April 24th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
For a brief non-sewer, yet camera related item: I read on a previous post about your displeasure with your D70, and that you were thinking of jumping ship to Canon. I made that mistake over a year and a half ago, and just righted myself this week. I lost a fortune seling all of my Nikon gear, paid a fortune for all new Canon gear, and then lost another fortune when I sold it. I am now happy, despite being broke, after coming home to the Nikon team. I just purchased a D200, and can’t even believe the difference in the experience. Not that Nikon is perfect, far from it, but you owe yourself to at least go take a look at the D200, of course, after the Sewer mayhem is over with.
April 24th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
P.S., Absolutely beautiful shot with the tulip, which lens are you using?
April 24th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
broch, thanks! I just used the stock 18-70mm lens that came with the D70.
April 25th, 2006 at 7:36 am
Well, you know what they say, problems that money can’t fix aren’t really problems… unless you don’t have money! I’m not sure if it helps much, but I clicked on [edited to avoid issues ... please don't mention in the comments what you do with your clicks] on your page and H’s.
April 25th, 2006 at 8:36 am
Sweet Jeebus. That’s insane.
How are your neighbors reacting to the street cutting?
April 25th, 2006 at 9:51 am
I had to replace the sewer line at our house. But our lines ran to the back (with a big back yard). Since my step-dad is a construction manager, my total cost was $800. But all the houses on our street are almost 60 years old, so everyone has or will have to do the same. I know our neighbors have received quotes from $10-12,000. If you are the first on your street to do this I doubt you are the last.
April 25th, 2006 at 10:08 am
I need some assistance, as your advice is over my head. You say to put bacteria down the drains. Where do I get this? Is there a specific product your recommend? Does it just go into the toilet or into the sink as well? Thanks!
April 25th, 2006 at 10:15 am
I am truly sorry this is happening to you guys, but coincidentally, we almost bought a house last week with similar issues. Luckily, we had a great inspector who found there was a leak in the lateral pipe under the slab part of the house plus potential leaks to all the connections in the bathrooms and raw sewage that backed up to the basement that the seller knew about but never disclosed. (FYI-have an inspector run the faucets for 30 minutes, then flush the toilets over and over, and you will know if there is a leak). The seller wasn’t willing to go the extra mile to locate the leak so we walked away. But we feel your pain so I clicked everything on both your sites a few times.
April 25th, 2006 at 10:54 am
I love the photo with the digger and the tulips. Beautiful flowers, beautiful blue sky, and no indication of the complete destruction and sewer-related issues yonder!!
Hope the problem gets sorted soon…it sucks that it’s so big a job, and costing so much, but hopefully that’s better in the long term.
April 25th, 2006 at 11:07 am
God, I feel your pain. We have had very similar problems with our plumbing and were told last time they had to come roto-rooter that they advice it being camera-ed next time it happens (should it…which it will). Best case scenario: it’s only the section where the old plumbing meets the plumbing in the newer part of the house. I break out in cold sweats thinking about the worst case.
The last time it was a problem, we ended up “flooding” not only the entire bathroom but about 1/2 into our bedroom…which is carpetted. Yeah. That will teach you to get over your germaphobia real quick like.
April 25th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Yuppers.
I’m soo sorry that it happened to you.
We still have pics of our excavation in the early 90s and I am still religious about calling our sewer guys every fall!
I hope Leta’s naps are quieter soon and Chuck doesn’t find anything interesting in the hole.
nazila
April 25th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Awww, that sucks. Two weeks after we bought our older house, hubby flushed the toilet and it blew the cap off a standing pipe in the yard and spewed everything everywhere. We had to get a guy our to dig up the back yard and remove the roots from the pipe. Your advice is sound. Just wondering what kind of bacteria one would buy, and where to get it?
-Creatrix in BC, Canada
April 25th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Perhaps you could recoup some losses by writing an urban jungle survival guide. I found these tips and the travel advice quite handy.
April 25th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
I love the shot of the tulips & the tractor. At least there’s still some beauty around you (besides H&L, of course!).
April 26th, 2006 at 9:31 am
WOW! for some reason the tulips just drove home to me..thank God! this didn’t happen in winter! Holy cow!how much worse would it have been with a couple damn feet of snow on the ground? Made me glad to be in FL.
You and Heather sure are plucky ducks, keep up the good spirit. Jezzie
April 26th, 2006 at 11:04 am
What kind of bacteria? My house is over 100 years old, I wanna know!
April 26th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Do not take the “not sudden and accidental” ocverage defense at face value.
I am not an insurance coverage attorney but I work with enough of them to know that policies that cover only “sudden and accidental” occurrences *DO* cover slowly-accruing, long term damage. At least, this is true in my jurisdiciton.
Check with your attorney.
Do not take the insurance company’s word on coverage.
April 26th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
I just read a case o this issue, Gruol Construction v. Insurance Company of North America, 11 Wn. App. 632, 524 P.2d 427 (1974). The Gruol court held that slowly-accummulating dry rot was an “accident”:
“The accident mentioned in the policy need not be a blow but may be a process. It is not required that the injury be the result of some contact with the bulldozer or the shelf or a rock hurled over from the shelf. It is not required to be sudden like an Alpine avalanche . . . A glacier moves slowly but inevitably.”
Id. at 636.
This is authority in Washington, not Utah. And I haven’t read your policy. But don’t just take the insurance company’s word for it. If you’re talking a lot of money it’s worth fighting over.
Insurance contracts are always construed against the carrier’s interest and in favor of the policy holder. Discuss coverage with your attorney.
April 26th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Another problem are poor trees. Silver Maples are one of the worst.
April 26th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
OK, I just did a little checking. It looks like there’s a split among various jurisdicitons in how to construe “sudden and accidental” in a homeowner’s policy. My jurisdiction and a few others do construe these terms to favor insureds. Unfortunately, it looks like Utah is in the majority of states that gives “sudden” its common and ordinary meaning. Slow processes (I would think root invasion of a sewer line is one of them) are not covered. But you should still talk to your lawyer.
April 27th, 2006 at 9:22 am
Heather mention you found a beach towel in the line. Not to sound like a “topper” (a la Dilbert), but my co-worker had a 2×4 pulled out of his line. Forunately for him, it was just over enough to be the city’s problem. The only thing they can figure is that a annoyed worker placed in there when building the subdivision as the house is only 15 years old.
April 27th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Same thing happened to us here in Texas. Our handy-dandy plumber also pointed out that our pipes were caked several inches thick in some places with cement-like residue from dishwasher soap and laundry soap. We now proclaim the Gospel of Liquid Detergent to everyone we meet.
May 2nd, 2006 at 9:18 am
I feel your pain. Six months after rehabbing the ghetto backyard of my rowhome, my toiled stopped flushing. A week later, I paid a man to jackhammer up half the salvaged brick we’d laid by hand. The culprit was a 100-year-old terra-cotta cleanout joint from the days when there was no indoor plumbing. There was an empty 10′x5′x5′ space under the concrete slab where the pipe simply disintegrated. There went all my back pay and a summer’s work…down the drain. Old houses are fun.