Sewage

You should be grateful that I've spared you the details of our latest sewer line woes. Well, until now, that is, so I guess you can stop being grateful. You know how we're always having sewer backups in the basement? (You might recall that the most recent one was late at night while Andy was in the hospital. Good times.) So it happened again a few weeks ago, and I called Big Famous Drain Cleaning Company as usual. After the cleanout, the guy suggested I have another guy come out the next day with his snaky camera thing to do a colonoscopy on my house, so I did.

"Oh, lady, you got trouble!" was the gist of that experience. I could see on the screen as the camera ended up submerged in, um, let's just call it "water" well before it even reached the street. The guy told me that I needed them to dig a hole in my yard to "jet" the blockage out toward the street, but oh no! Turns out our sewer line is 14 feet underground, which is more than double the usual depth. So "That's gonna cost ya!" to the tune of something like $10,000. And they hoped it would do the trick, because if it didn't, I'd be in for more than twice that to dig up all the way to the street. And they also strongly suggested I not use any water until I did this.

Fortunately, a cooler head (Andy's) prevailed; he called the city DPW, who sent their own cameraman out for a repeat colonoscopy. (In the meantime, we flushed as little as possible, did the dishes in a pot and then dumped the dirty water behind the garage, went to the laundromat, and showered elsewhere or not all.) The city has no axe to grind because they are not in the plumbing business. This time the camera did not end up submerged, although we saw lots and lots of tree roots. (It's those darn roots that the cleanout guys are always getting at—we don't flush anything besides toilet paper.) Our quaint old main sewer line is made up of two-foot-long sections of clay pipe, and at every seam all of those quaint old trees outside send their roots in to wreak havoc. The city guy said that a good cleaner-outer guy should be able to get the roots. So we called a local plumbing company who came and did it. Then the city cameraman came again and got the camera all the way to the street without getting stuck on anything. All of this took more than a week.

The upshot: We need to get cleaned out prophylactically at least twice a year, not just when the basement toilet starts gurling. And we should consider replacing the main sewer line at some point with PVC. Or we can look into lining the current pipes with PVC, although ours are so bendy that I don't know whether it's feasible.

Also: I am so angry with the guys from Big Famous Drain Cleaning Company. They called me every day that week to say, "Karen, I'm really worried! It's going to rain tomorrow and then we won't be able to dig, and you can't wait any longer or you going to have a basement full of sewage!" And they were wrong, wrong, wrong. It used to be that they were the only ones who would come on a weekend or at night (which seems to be when all of our sewer backups occur), but that's no longer the case, so I will never call them again.

Comments

[Stephanie]

That was awful. We are on the twice a year clean out from the city also. They raised their prices a few years back. They used to be cheap! But, it is better than yucky stuff in the basement.

[Janet]

I wish I had known you were dealing with this! We had the same problem when we lived on Beacon St. -- After our first "flood" we learned we needed to have Newton come out 2x/year. When we sold the house, we told the new owners so that they wouldn't have to learn-by-flood. Newton used to charge around $25; I'm guessing it's more now . . .

[Karen]

The city can't do our house because they have only a rigid cleaner-outer and we need the flexible one because of the way our sewer line is shaped. And yes, they charge $250 now! Still cheaper than a private plumbing company.

[Wendy]

Oh, what a saga! Sometimes I think renting sounds okay, you know? Best of luck from here on out.