They’re coming today to excavate and fix it — $4K if we’re lucky, $8K if we’re not. Joy.
So I’m working from home, since, quoth the statement of work.
There will be a trench approximately 2′ wide x 8′ long (midyard). Everything in the way will be affected.
Ya think? We’re going to do some emergency iris removal, maybe a rose bush, when they arrive and describe the site of the carnage in more detail.
This repair does not cover any unforeseens such as cavities, cave-ins, buried debris, sprinkler systems, etc., etc.
I’m pretty certain they’ll hit a sprinkler line in there somewhere. Ah, well — I knew there was a reason (besides the weather) I didn’t turn on the sprinklers last week.
81 view(s)
My ex-roomie and his Dad got a house to rent to myself and my ex-roomie. My roomie’s Dad was wise and got a roto rooter guy to look at the sewer line before purchasing the house. Everything seemed fine.
A few months down the road water backed up into the house. My roomie’s Dad then did the video camera thingy to see what was being blocked, and the city came out to inspect the sewer lines. Sure enough it was the big tree in the front yard. A root grew into the pipe. Solution is to pay to have the pipe cleaned once a year. Which surprisingly was still cheaper over 10 years than getting rid of the root and fixing the pipe.
Mental note for me when I start looking for a house, look for big ass trees in the front lawn. Then have the seller pay for a complete inspection.
Well, in our case it was a matter of one of the pipe joints (clay) coming askew and reducing flow about by a quarter to a third — and preventing any sort of roto-rootering past that point (mid-yard).
Doing a sewer line inspection is an excellent idea as part of a house purchase.
Been taking pictures all day of the festivities out front. That 2×8-foot trench was something like 9+ feet deep. Backhoe time. Lots of dirt. Off in the lawn, fortunately — and, amazingly, no sprinkler lines touched. Did learn where the sewer and gas lines run down the front — that may be an issue for eventual landscaping out there.
Good news — after the dropped joint, the line looks pretty good all the way to the main tap across the street. There’s a lot of roots at that point, but it’s not damaging the pipe or joint per se — and the extra $4K buys a lot of root-killer and roto-rootering.
They’re filling the hole back in now, huzzah. Soon we can actually run water and flush toilets again (since, obviously, you can’t do that while they’re working on the line).
Rather than replacing the entire pipe to the street, they ended up just replacing a portion of either end of the dropped joint. Interestingly, current code requires a clean-out into a line that long — and they did two, one with pipe angling in either direction, so the line can be cleaned upwards or downwards from that point.
Well I been workin on a Sewer Line
Goin down down
Workin on a Sewer Line
Whew about to slip down
Five oclock in the mornin
Im up before the sun
When my work day is over
Im too tired for havin fun
Lord I am so tired
How long can this go on
I been workin goin workin
Whew about to slip down
~wonders off with a grin on his face and skip in his step~
Amusingly enough, once they had it all reburied and everything, there was a grave-sized mound of dirt on the lawn. Makes me wish it was Halloween and we could put a tombstone behind it.
You could still do that. Would be pretty funny to catch glimpses from neighbors and those walking past.
You could make it for Greg Potemkin!
Ha!
On the Greg Potemkin front, prep keeps going on for folks to move over into that area. Someone actually cleaned off his board (to write some other stuff) — *except* for his name.
On the bright side, he seems to be keeping his cube a lot cleaner than he used to.
For the record (and so that we don’t have to go through trying to figure out who it was whose service we liked so much so that we can call them on another problem we’re having), the company that did this for us 2.5 yrs ago was ARS Rescue Rooter of Aurora.
(Kudos to Margie for tracking it down.)