RonnyK
New Member
Hello all,
Over the weekend we ran into a situation and I would welcome thoughts and guidance before things resume tomorrow. Here are the basics:
We live in a 1920s colonial with public sewer connection. Several years ago, we began experiencing intermittent slow drains, weak flushing and gurgling in our first floor sinks and toilet-- usually coinciding with rain. It would eventually clear up itself (until the next heavy rain), but the duration of each episode has gotten longer over time. This past week, with more heavy rain, we went from the above symptoms, to actually having the toilet overflow when the dishwasher and/or washing machine drained.
We called a plumber who opined that it was a likely a clog in the sewer line and, given the connection with rain, probably a root infiltration. Our outside cleanout is in the back yard, near the rear corner of the house, and appears to go down and make a couple of turns before running straight out to the street (under our driveway). The plumber walked off the distance from our outside cleanout to the public sewer line and then began running the snake machine (with a root cutting head) and adding lengths of cable as he went. at around 45' or so, he announced he had hit "something" and then, after a bit of resistance with the cable, he said he was through the obstruction. He stopped feeding the cable and put the machine in reverse, but the last length of cable (the one closest to the machine) came back up disconnected/broken off from the rest. The plumber attempted to use a retrieval bit but was not able to grab the cable in the sewer line, which he estimated to be about 10' in from the cleanout. The plumber then told me the owner was going to bring out the camera so that they could see where the disconnect happened and mark the distance exactly. He waited nearly an hour and a half, the owner never arrived and the plumber told me that they decided the water was probably too murky to see anything with the camera anyway. The plumber advised that they would be back on Monday with a small excavator and what they want to do is excavate a small area of asphalt on my driveway (above the area where the cable broke), retrieve the cable and install a cleanout that would be a straight run to the public sewer line.
I am kind of going along with this for now, and when I asked the plumber about cost he told me on Saturday that (a) they will probably not charge me for the weekend visit; and (b) responsibility for cost of the excavation will depend on what caused the cable to break (did it get caught up in roots and snap or was it caused by something else). From my observation, the cable appeared to just have come uncoupled as opposed to be broken but I am not 100% sure. So here are my questions:
1. Does it make sense to do the excavation for purposes of gaining a new cleanout that is a straight run?
2. Is it reasonable that I should be responsible for time and expense attributable to retrieving the broken cable? Should the plumber first have run a camera to see what we were dealing with?
3. Does it matter that nothing was really explained to me first? If so, I might have insisted that a camera be used to at least try to figure out the problem.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!
Over the weekend we ran into a situation and I would welcome thoughts and guidance before things resume tomorrow. Here are the basics:
We live in a 1920s colonial with public sewer connection. Several years ago, we began experiencing intermittent slow drains, weak flushing and gurgling in our first floor sinks and toilet-- usually coinciding with rain. It would eventually clear up itself (until the next heavy rain), but the duration of each episode has gotten longer over time. This past week, with more heavy rain, we went from the above symptoms, to actually having the toilet overflow when the dishwasher and/or washing machine drained.
We called a plumber who opined that it was a likely a clog in the sewer line and, given the connection with rain, probably a root infiltration. Our outside cleanout is in the back yard, near the rear corner of the house, and appears to go down and make a couple of turns before running straight out to the street (under our driveway). The plumber walked off the distance from our outside cleanout to the public sewer line and then began running the snake machine (with a root cutting head) and adding lengths of cable as he went. at around 45' or so, he announced he had hit "something" and then, after a bit of resistance with the cable, he said he was through the obstruction. He stopped feeding the cable and put the machine in reverse, but the last length of cable (the one closest to the machine) came back up disconnected/broken off from the rest. The plumber attempted to use a retrieval bit but was not able to grab the cable in the sewer line, which he estimated to be about 10' in from the cleanout. The plumber then told me the owner was going to bring out the camera so that they could see where the disconnect happened and mark the distance exactly. He waited nearly an hour and a half, the owner never arrived and the plumber told me that they decided the water was probably too murky to see anything with the camera anyway. The plumber advised that they would be back on Monday with a small excavator and what they want to do is excavate a small area of asphalt on my driveway (above the area where the cable broke), retrieve the cable and install a cleanout that would be a straight run to the public sewer line.
I am kind of going along with this for now, and when I asked the plumber about cost he told me on Saturday that (a) they will probably not charge me for the weekend visit; and (b) responsibility for cost of the excavation will depend on what caused the cable to break (did it get caught up in roots and snap or was it caused by something else). From my observation, the cable appeared to just have come uncoupled as opposed to be broken but I am not 100% sure. So here are my questions:
1. Does it make sense to do the excavation for purposes of gaining a new cleanout that is a straight run?
2. Is it reasonable that I should be responsible for time and expense attributable to retrieving the broken cable? Should the plumber first have run a camera to see what we were dealing with?
3. Does it matter that nothing was really explained to me first? If so, I might have insisted that a camera be used to at least try to figure out the problem.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!