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 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.