Plumbing Problems
Donation protected
I'm staring down the barrel of a giant plumbing bill.
I've waxed rhapsodic on the badly done DIY of some of this house. We've got a list of projects that we're working on getting done. But this one took the cake and it hit us right out of the blue.
A little background - there are two houses on the property, mine and the one my housemates live in. The sewer lines from my place feed into the main line under the other house. My building is set lower than the other house, so there's an impeller pump (sometimes called a grinder pump) in the line from my place to send things along to the big drains properly. It's not an unusual setup. Even regular houses have this if the properly slopes up to the city sewer main, so it didn't trip any flags in the inspection when we bought the place.
When we figured out it wasn't just a standard clog we called in some professionals. With their help we confirmed that the impeller pump was the problem. Not only that, it is dead and can't be repaired. That was back on January 25th.
Without it to push things along, the whole system stops. All the downstairs plumbing backs up into the bathroom downstairs whenever it's used. And I can't do any more than use the toilet up in my place without it causing flooding downstairs.
Even worse, we discovered that it wasn't installed in anything like a proper fashion. They buried a plastic garbage can, feeding the appropriate lines into some holes they cut into it, then they put the pump in a metal garbage can inside that, after cutting some holes for the lines. The plumber was horrified.
By law he cannot replace the dead pump (over $2000 in it's own right) without putting in an up-to-code sump (the rest of the price). He's doing his best on the price, but this is a lot of digging and re-jiggering of the piping.
The plumber has got the parts, the manpower, and an opening in their schedule. With your help we could get this fixed as early as next Tuesday. To be clear, I don't want it to seem like we're trying to stick y'all with our whole plumbing bill, that's not the intent here. We'd be so happy with any help you can give.
I've waxed rhapsodic on the badly done DIY of some of this house. We've got a list of projects that we're working on getting done. But this one took the cake and it hit us right out of the blue.
A little background - there are two houses on the property, mine and the one my housemates live in. The sewer lines from my place feed into the main line under the other house. My building is set lower than the other house, so there's an impeller pump (sometimes called a grinder pump) in the line from my place to send things along to the big drains properly. It's not an unusual setup. Even regular houses have this if the properly slopes up to the city sewer main, so it didn't trip any flags in the inspection when we bought the place.
When we figured out it wasn't just a standard clog we called in some professionals. With their help we confirmed that the impeller pump was the problem. Not only that, it is dead and can't be repaired. That was back on January 25th.
Without it to push things along, the whole system stops. All the downstairs plumbing backs up into the bathroom downstairs whenever it's used. And I can't do any more than use the toilet up in my place without it causing flooding downstairs.
Even worse, we discovered that it wasn't installed in anything like a proper fashion. They buried a plastic garbage can, feeding the appropriate lines into some holes they cut into it, then they put the pump in a metal garbage can inside that, after cutting some holes for the lines. The plumber was horrified.
By law he cannot replace the dead pump (over $2000 in it's own right) without putting in an up-to-code sump (the rest of the price). He's doing his best on the price, but this is a lot of digging and re-jiggering of the piping.
The plumber has got the parts, the manpower, and an opening in their schedule. With your help we could get this fixed as early as next Tuesday. To be clear, I don't want it to seem like we're trying to stick y'all with our whole plumbing bill, that's not the intent here. We'd be so happy with any help you can give.
Organizer
Colleen Hannon
Organizer
Snohomish, WA
