The Joys of Home Ownership

Ownership has its privileges. It also has its liabilities, or responsibilities, whatever you want to call them. This week ours has been a broken sewer line from the house to the street.

It all started with a swampy, wet spot in the yard. Hubby was concerned. It was less than 10' from where we know our sewer line back up/clean out spot is in the front flower bed. It could either be a broken sewer line, or the irrigation system. Well, there's only one way to find out, so he called Roto-Rooter to come do a free estimate on our sewer line. That was Monday.

Turned out that we do have a break in our sewer line, but no where near the sink hole. To find out what the sink hole problem was, we had to do a dig test. That turned out to be the most expensive hole in the ground I've ever seen (pictured). The problem was a leaking valve for the irrigation system. The Roto-Rooter guy who dug the whole would not/could not fix the problem.

That afternoon, after the Roto-Rooter guys left, I called every irrigation service company I could get a phone number for (in our area, of course), and managed to find a guy to come fix it almost immediately. That was good. All that was left when he was done was muddy grass, and he raised up the access panels that had been covered over with grass. One problem down.

The bigger one to go.

We had three options for fixing the broken sewer line. One was to take out the tree sitting right on top of it, which was out of the question. Only God can make a tree. That tree is beautiful. It's almost as tall as our two story house. Another options was to run a new sewer line at a diagonal across the lawn, between our two big trees, as far from the root systems as possible. That would also require us to put a clean-out thing on the street end at our expense, as codes and rules have changed in the last 10 years or so, since this house was built. That would cost around $5000. Not a good option. The third option was to run a pipe around the tree for significantly less $. This option was our choice.

Tuesday morning the work began to run a pipe around the tree. That meant lots of digging for most of Tuesday. The plumbers on Monday had located the pipe, thinking it went straight under the tree. So the guys on Tuesday started digging a trench going around the tree to the left. After about 2.5 hours of digging, the guys ran into a giant rock. It's not surprising in this area for there to be giant chunks of limestone not too far under the top soil. So the guys came to me around lunch time telling me that they needed to rent a jack-hammer to break it up if they were to continue. Of course, that meant extra $$$.

Later that afternoon, the jack-hammering began. Let me tell you, being inside when that was going on right outside was no picnic. I'm sure it was no picnic for the guys doing the work either, but at least they get paid for doing it.

After breaking up the rock and digging for a few more hours, the guys made another discovery. They thought they should have been running into the pipe, but they hadn't yet. The pipe didn't go straight under the tree like they expected. It took a 45 degree turn to the right exactly under the tree. That meant all the digging they had done on the left side of the tree was in vain. They had to start over on the right side. They didn't run into any giant rock on the right side of the tree (which is probably why the pipe was laid there to begin with), so the jack-hammer rental was a completely unnecessary expense, and waste of time.

Hubby and I both were pretty upset about all that. We had paid a ridiculous amount of money to this company to dig up the wet spot the day before, and then we just paid for a jack-hammer rental that was completely unnecessary for the job. And if they hadn't spent so many hours going to get the jack-hammer, and digging the wrong way, they'd have been able to finish the job in one day. Instead they left it looking like a crime scene and came back to finish the next day.

There is a silver lining to this whole cloud. We found this problem without a flood of raw sewage in the house, which is a major plus, and now it's all done, and we won't have to think about it for another 15 to 20 years, or so they say. The way it is now, they still expect the tree to interfere, but not for a long, long time.

We did end up disputing the charges for the jackhammer. What ended up happening was that they reduced the charge for the hole they dug for the irrigation system valve leak. Fighting that was a huge pain, and I had some very angry plumbers sitting in their van for an hour while everything was sorted out between Hubby, the plumbers and their supervisor.

I delayed the laundry I was planning to tackle on Monday, and didn't get to it until Thursday. Let me tell you, it was so nice to drain all the water I wanted without having to worry about whether or not my pipes were being cut. And by the time they left, I was more than ready to not have strangers right outside my window, on my front lawn.

One of my least favorite things about being a stay-at-home mom is that I'm the one who has to deal with all the repair/service people when there's something like this to be done. It seems like I'm always having to report back to Hubby to tell them what the guy said, and then remember the questions he wants me to ask and all that. I look forward to the day when I'll go back to work, and then it will be up to Hubby to work from home, or go in late or whatever, to deal with this stuff himself.