The issue arose again, so this time we called our other buddy Dave, who had a better rodder and is a plumber by trade. He came out and said, there was sand - uh oh, that's a big red flag! We had a plumbing company come out, they rodded it again. They said there was an issue and that we would have to have a camera put down the pipe. They also said our city had an issue, but that's another story. They figured we had about 3 breaks in our piping. They estimated that it would cost between $12,000 to $20,000 to fix.
At that point, everything at the cottage was put on hold. We were beaten, the cottage was officially a money pit. We didn't know how we would raise that kind of money. The sewer company said, they bought us a year, as long as we didn't do laundry or put tp down the toilet. Eww, what do you do with tp; if you can't put it down the toilet. And so it began, we bought a Diaper Genie and some doggie bags, I couldn't just throw the tp in the wastebasket, the thought of that just grossed me out even more.
We had to take navy showers and laundry had to be done outside with the wringer washer, so it could drain outdoors. Needless to say, we learned a lot about how much we waste water and what we were made of. Our water bill was next to nothing, which helped us save for the sewer.
Finally, we had about half of the money, so we had the plumbing company back out to put the camera down. What they found was such a God send to us. Two of the places they thought were breaks in the pipe, were just corners - whew, they don't have to bust up the basement concrete.
They found that the issue was underneath our sidewalk, out by the big tree in the easement. We were all sure it was tree roots, but we had no plans to remove the tree, we need it for shade because we face the day time sun. The cost was now going to be just over $4000.00. Fantastic, now let's get it done!
It was scheduled for that Friday, they came out earlier than expected and got to work right away. The utility company's had already marked the lines. They even wrote Dig where the sewer company needed to dig.
After digging down so far, I started to see utility companies returning and city employees/officials showing up. It turns out, there was a gas line running right on top of our sewer pipe, that was not on the utility map. Thankfully, they did not knick it. As if that wasn't crazy enough, there was a fiber optic phone cable running right thru our sewer pipe. After all this time, we found out, that it was the phone company that caused this nightmare. The sewer company took a lot of pics for us, and the city inspector also agreed, the phone company will have to reimburse all the money we are out for repairing the sewer pipe. Here is a pic of the cable going thru our pipe. Sorry for the quality, I will change it when I get the better pics.
Not everything at the cottage is roses, lol : )
