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House plumbing woes
2024.07.21 00:04
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I'm a glass half full kind of person. I don't automatically suspect businesses to be predatory. Recently I've been unsettled how, over time, the most trusted and established business can change. The decades old HVAC company we've used personally and at church now routinely dispatches careless and dishonest technicians.  A couple weeks ago, I had to manage a plumbing problem because my husband was out of town. He has extensive knowledge and experience and we haven't needed anything that requires a professional. Our downstairs tenant had a blocked up toilet. I know the basics of household plumbing but I couldn't fix the problem with what we had on hand. So, I called a well established local plumbing company.  The tech was here a scant ten minutes and told me the job would be a thousand dollars. I told him I wanted a second opinion.  I contacted a second company. Another technician came. He said the same thing and told me I needed the septic tank drained which I knew I was not true. I had him unblock the toilet. He had to remove the toilet and address a blockage several feet down the line. It wasn't  a thousand dollars but almost. It's three weeks later. The problem is back.  My husband is here. The tech is scheduled to come back. I can't wait to see how this goes. If the company does the right thing by us, I will take the time to write a good review on Google and Yelp and Facebook. 
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Comments7
  • Profile Image
    Carol Elworthy
    M17.....Oh no.....I dread big things going wrong with owning our house and costing hundreds of £..…Been lucky so far, but you never know for how long..🤞🤞🤞
    Monica Paire
    Author
    I bet some of your luck is because you are knowledgeable and diligent. When the big issues occur, it will be because time or weather gets us all eventually, including our roof, our well, and sometimes the very foundations of our building. 
  • Profile Image
    s rush
    Sounds like your instincts are telling you what's up. Trust yourself and your experience. Keep us updated, I hope everything works out.
    Monica Paire
    Author
    I will update. It drives me nuts when someone posts an unresolved situation and never lets us know how it turned out. LOL.
  • Monica Paire
    Author
    This is really gross. Don't read my Update if you are easily  made sick. The tech returned today.  It took a while, but the problem was discovered. About five feet from the house,  a section of the pipe to the septic tank was slightly crushed. My husband thinks it probably happened when the roofers were here two years ago. They drove a huge truck with materials onto the lawn where the pipe lay beneath.  No one could have known that the load damaged anything beneath the lawn.A crack formed and a tree root got in, just a little at this point. My husband could see on the scope the roots were slim and feathery. The clog entangled and blocking the pipe consisted of wipes and huge mounds of toilet paper and what you would expect. We don't  use wipes or flush huge mounds of anything upstairs in our part of the building, but our tenant is another stiry. Here's the gross part. The plumber said there was a pile of poo in my tenant's toilet bigger than the toilet bowl. I already knew my tenant had a habit of not  flushing for days. I've had to say something to him about the smell many times. He'd apologize and say he would flush more often and clean his bathroom. He was obviously lying about flushing more. The plumber said his toilet was completely full of poo. For all we know, the first time the plumber came, the problem wasn't fixed from day one and our tenant never told us. He just kept using the toilet.  My tenant was home part of the time and didn't seem bothered by the odor or the poo. The plumber said he walked into the bathroom, where sewage had backed up into the tub and a pile of poo sat in the toilet bowl, chewing on some fried chicken. Asked him how it was going and said he was leaving for work. For now the pipe is clear but our next step is replacing the damaged pipe and having a serious talk with our tenant about flushing daily or finding another place to live. As uncomfortable as this makes us, we may insist on weekly inspections. 
  • Christy
    Oh no, that sounds like a nightmare.
    Monica Paire
    Author
    It's annoying but could be worse. Can you imagine if we didn't know anything and were at the mercy of every home repair professional who walked in here? I feel bad for folks who don't know even the basics of home maintenance and electric and plumbing beforehand.  Twenty years ago, we sold our previous house to a young couple with small children who had only ever lived in rentals their whole lives. When my husband offered to leave for them our records of home maintenance and repairs, the husband brushed him off and said, "I pay people to do that."  Two years after we sold them the house, they were in foreclosure. We weren't surprised. I bet they lived a nightmare.

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