- Joined
- Jan 21, 2010
- Messages
- 8,735
- Reaction score
- 148
6 months after I bought the house I kept having sewage backups in my back yard. The main drain line went from the back of the house, wrapped around one side, and then to the street about 100' away. The backups kept occurring literally 5 feet from the house under a dirt area.
So I dig up the dirt area, and found an old pie tin was covering the former septic tank clean out line. For some reason it was backing up and overflowing by this pie tin. So we had a plumber come in and snake it out. 6 weeks later, we had another back up, and I was pissed. We had another plumber come in and clean it out. Mind you this is starting to be winter in New England.
Fast forward to the day after Christmas, and we get ANOTHER back up. I finally had a plumber come in that had the underground location sensor, and he tried to clean it out, and then realized his equipment kept getting stuck about halfway through the side yard on the way to the street. He had trouble even pulling his snake back out of the piping. He marked the area where his sensor was stopped so we'd know.
Because it was the middle of the yard, we had to have a back hoe come in and dig out our side yard in January, when there was 3 feet of snow on the ground. It turns out that about 20 years ago, a high pressure gas pipeline was put in perpendicular to our sewage line, and to put it in they had to cut out our line, lay theirs, then reattach our sewage line. They didn't properly install our sewage line, so it collapsed in the middle of the yard, and was causing a backup for about 100' all the way to the back of the house.
I contacted the gas people, and they came out during the back hoe session, and realized it was their error and paid for all of it, plus the first two times the plumbers tried to snake it out. Keep in mind all of this started 6 MONTHS after I bought my first house, so I was freaked out.
So I dig up the dirt area, and found an old pie tin was covering the former septic tank clean out line. For some reason it was backing up and overflowing by this pie tin. So we had a plumber come in and snake it out. 6 weeks later, we had another back up, and I was pissed. We had another plumber come in and clean it out. Mind you this is starting to be winter in New England.
Fast forward to the day after Christmas, and we get ANOTHER back up. I finally had a plumber come in that had the underground location sensor, and he tried to clean it out, and then realized his equipment kept getting stuck about halfway through the side yard on the way to the street. He had trouble even pulling his snake back out of the piping. He marked the area where his sensor was stopped so we'd know.
Because it was the middle of the yard, we had to have a back hoe come in and dig out our side yard in January, when there was 3 feet of snow on the ground. It turns out that about 20 years ago, a high pressure gas pipeline was put in perpendicular to our sewage line, and to put it in they had to cut out our line, lay theirs, then reattach our sewage line. They didn't properly install our sewage line, so it collapsed in the middle of the yard, and was causing a backup for about 100' all the way to the back of the house.
I contacted the gas people, and they came out during the back hoe session, and realized it was their error and paid for all of it, plus the first two times the plumbers tried to snake it out. Keep in mind all of this started 6 MONTHS after I bought my first house, so I was freaked out.
