It's a collapse. You could see a broken shard of pipe on the TV screen, plus more roots. Can't jet any further than that. It becomes clay pipe underground, turns downward, then left across the weeping foundation wall, then to the side street. The blockage is at the front left (stage left) corner of the house. With the jet on, the ground is a geyser everywhere you probe. Hopefully this explains the dripping behind the foundation wall, and the musty smell downstairs.
Luckily we have family nearby to stay with.
Seriously, berkeley this.
Reading through it sounds like you just bought the house, wonder if there is an recourse on the seller, they had to know
Flipped house. They bought it from a willed estate almost a year ago with no disclosure, so they didn't have one either. Investor never lived in it, just renovated it, so they problem never stressed the system enough to find out. It's looking like an insurance claim.
If insurance is going to create a hardship, I'd do this job myself. For what it's worth, digging a new sewer line is actually really easy. Rent a small excavator and start digging. County and city rules vary around who can make the physical connections and what's required for bedding the pipe in. Shoot the grade with a laser transit or rotary level to determine what the house discharge height is and what the connection depth is. Minimum slope % is somewhat variable by your local authority from my experience, so look that up and calc out if you have what you need. It would be weird if you didn't...but depending on the route you have to take the pipe, runs can get a little long and eat up your slope.
I'm sure you know all this already and it's more the struggle of making the time to do it yourself against all your other obligations. Plus the annoyance of destroying the yard you just bought.
Definitely an OH S%&!# moment, home inspector didn't catch it?
SV reX
MegaDork
3/3/23 3:41 p.m.
In reply to TRoglodyte :
How would a home inspector know? He can't see through walls, or inside pipes.
Unless we had camera'd the line during inspection, no way to know. I don't think that's very common. Insurance is being quite cooperative, and we're already scheduled to dig tomorrow while I'm out of the country. Plenty of family nearby to manage the situation thankfully.
I know it's a simple job, I just don't have the time and this is what insurance is for.
In reply to SV reX :
That would be a red flag if I were inspecting it. At least a what's up?
Replaced collapsed sewer pipe 20 years ago. Still clogs every once in a while. Get a jet blaster.
Dang this sounds like misery - but great that your insurance is going to cover.
Instagram decided recently that I need to start following house inspectors. A recent video short showed a flipped house that had a new shower. He poured a five gallon bucket of cold water in the shower and then used an infrared camera that showed water moving outside the shower pan and under LVT flooring in the adjacent room. Cosmetically beautiful but remodeled totally wrong. Between that and new builds that are almost as bad - there is some pretty shockingly shoddy stuff being sold for a LOT of money.
Due to the age being just over 50 years, they're only covering $2500 which is about half the cost. So it could be worse. The job is already done though. Here are some photos.
They added two cleanouts, one at the house and one at the street.
The offending pipe:
In reply to maschinenbau :
I'm no plumber, but that looks broken to me.
I was expecting more than 5k for that repair. Hopefully this is the last major troubles you have in your new house for awhile.
At least in California when you sell a house most of the time if not all of the time they require a warranty to come with it. You might want to look in to see if you happen to have one of those warranties.
Did they cut a new tap at the street or re-use the old one?
In reply to maschinenbau :
At least now you know that your E36 M3 will go downhill.
