$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.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-07-12 05:38 pm (UTC)$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