My tenant at Rutherford texted me the other day. It was a picture of a floor drain in the basement. She said, “Water kept coming up” through it. I texted it to my GC, who’s also been fantastic about helping me with small service calls like this, to get his opinion.
He said it probably just needs to be snaked, so he sent his plumber over there.
But he didn’t come. And he didn’t show the next day either. Everyone is slammed.
So his plumber recommended another that DID show up the next day. He spent three hours trying to snake it, cam it, etc. to find the issue only to conclude that the pipe is collapsed.
He said he’d be able to dig it out with his excavator but we’d need to rip out the back deck(!) to get to the main plumbing line in the back of the house.
WHAT?!?
I was a bit overwhelmed having to make a decision like that in 45 seconds, so we (my GC and I) told him to hold off while we talked to the original plumber, that we know and trust, to get a second opinion.
Well, we spoke to him and he said it sounded legit. So I gave the greenlight go have at it, stressing that I REALLY didn’t want to have to rip the deck out if we didn’t need to.
Friday I get a call from my GC saying he had “some good news and… well, some good news”. Apparently, the crushed part of the pipe was behind the garage, so it was unlikely we’d have to rip out the deck (awesome!). The other good news was that the initial quote ($2,500 — not bad actually) sounded like it’d be for the entire job, including the initial 3 hours the guy had spent trying to diagnose and solve the issue.
They were supposed to come back today and do it, but decided to wait until tomorrow because it was supposed to rain. For what it’s worth, it just started raining about 8 second ago (it’s 9pm at night). Whatever…
How did the pipe collapse? It’s not entirely clear (to me at least), but it seems that the neighbor’s tree that fell over in a storm in August not only damaged our garage roof, but was the culprit in the main plumbing line collapse.
This house, Rutherford, has been an absolutely nightmare, and I haven’t even written about the $25,000 insurance claim we had to make on it the other month.
I learned a lot with this one, and I’m definitely still paying that tuition off. If I thought I could sell it and get my money out at this point, I’m pretty sure I would.