house paranoia

[dirtylibrarian]

Being a homeowner can be worrisome.  After I replaced the furnace, I crossed my fingers and knock on wood all the time hoping I won' t have to deal with any more big repairs for a long while.

But a girl gets worried sometimes.  Today, while out doing a bit of weeding (my goal is 5 minutes minimum of yard work a day for the month of June), I noticed a crack in my lawn.  Under the tree.  Out by where the sewer line is supposed to be.  And suddenly I am paranoid that this is a sign of some terrible, huge repair in the waiting.  Google was no help, as crack and lawn just brings up stuff about faulty lawnmowers.

Anyone ever heard of such a thing?  Any advice? Ack!

Comments

[dirtylibrarian.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...this is talking about cracks in pipes, while I actually have a crack in the soil of the lawn. Sorta reassuring. But at the same time, I do have a tree over the sewer line. Hmmm.

[fluxions.livejournal.com]

The grass was greener and lusher over my sewer line. I didn't have a crack in my lawn -- that looked like the best part of the lawn. But the green grass grew in a straight line across my lawn, which was how I knew that the sewer line was leaking. I think it was something like $2000 to replace.

[dirtylibrarian.livejournal.com]

Now that is reassuring! I will watch out for it.

$2000 is a lot of money, but not enough to break the bank. Also reassuring.

Thank you.

[(Anonymous)]

Hiya!

$2000 sounds good - but there may be some hidden fees. In the City of Seattle area - where I live - there's a *HUGE* fee if they have to do any work on the street outside your property. Your property is your own business, but Seattle has laws that require the plumber to access the city line by removing the entire concrete square in a street - they can't just "dig a small hole". Also - they have to treat the dirt as "toxic waste" and have it trucked out and new dirt brought in to replace it.

We went thru something like this with our sewer line. We had a blockage that we thought was due to tree roots - turned out it was a simple blockage due to our roof drain emptying into our sewer line that was easily cleared. (We had no idea it was setup that way!!) At that time, the plumber detailed our options. Since we have an old concrete line, he strongly suggested "in-place replacement" where they send a big awl down your old line "exploding" it and then replacing it with PVC pipe in the area where your old line used to be.

But - here's the catch - they can only do this if the old line is still good. If it breaks - then that's when the city scenario detailed above becomes active.

Another thing to do if you're concerned about your line is a "sewer cam" video. As part of our plumber visit, he made a videotape with an endoscopic camera of our entire line. This showed us potential problem areas as well as verifying that our line was still structurally sound.

By the way - if you live in the City of Seattle area, this website is genius:
http://web1.seattle.gov/dpd/sidesewercardsv2/
You can use it to find out *exactly* how your sewer system is setup. Saved us a lot of time and effort when the plumber showed it to us.

Cheers,
Paul

[terriblestorm.livejournal.com]

Hey Dawn, so I can't go camping this weekend. I hope you were able to find a friend to go with! Also, are you doing anything fun tonight? I'm looking for something to do.

[dirtylibrarian.livejournal.com]

I still have no really camping plans, but am enjoying lazing around the house and working on projects right now.

I've been invited to a BBQ (the gay couple's who's wedding I went to last weekend) in Ballard. If I decide to go, think you might want to go with? It looks to be pretty small.