New Sewer Line

Since the day we moved into The Homestead, we have had trouble with the sewer backing up. We thought the problem was out by the street where our line connected to the city. It was clay pipe that had been installed in 1968, and we thought it was broken. Well, it turns out that the problem was much closer to home.

When you buy a house, especially one that has seen more than a hundred years of wear and tear, you ought to expect to do some maintenance. Well, evidently, some of the previous owners of The Homestead didn’t feel the need to do anything. So, they let a small forest of elm trees grow up in the foundation to the point where they were lifting the roof off the house. One of the first things we did when we moved in was to remove those trees. I then sprayed the stumps repeatedly with Round-up until there was no more green. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. The extensive root system was still alive and it had worked its way into some cracked cast iron pipe near the wall of the bathroom. What a mess.

We hired a backhoe, a plumber, and a laborer. They started from the floor underneath the potty and replaced everything—five different kinds of old pipe—from there to the street. The trench was six feet deep and a hundred feet long. We haven’t got the bill yet, but I suspect that it will approach mid-four figures. With that kind of looming deficit, we will probably be eating out of the town dumpsters for a couple of months, but at least we’ll be able to flush.