OT: Foundation and Plumbing Repair

[weisan]

Thanks for all the responses, pals, you have given me a lot to think about, I appreciate it!

[Ken Robb]

Originally Posted by HenryA

I hope I don't offend any members by this -- but there are lots of complete shysters in both the foundation and plumbing businesses. Anything underneath a house is easy to scam home owners on. 90% of us will not go under the house or apply our normal logic and thinking abilities to such a repair. Its just under there with all the spiders and scary darkness. Once you get past that, this situation can be overcome easily.

Years ago a termite inspector in rural Alabama told my father-in-law that his house "was eat up with termites". My 70 year-old father-in-law got out his coveralls and said "Show me". The inspector got in his truck and drove off. :-)

[weisan]

Update:

The foundation company sent someone down to take measurements this morning and apparently the foundation hasn't really shifted that much.

Now the question is: why did the pipe break?

I have an appointment with the plumbing company this Friday to run the camera through the whole system to make sure there're no other leaks.

If the damage is localized to just that bathroom, instead of tunneling which is both labor and $$ intensive, maybe just let them punch through a hole in the floor to get to the leak.

I can fix broken pipe but getting to the leak is what I am not so sure about.

[cmg]

does the solution need to be high tech? if the house has a crawl space just remove the skirting nearest the restroom and look for the leak. is the restroom on an outside wall? is this slab on grade or a wood floor on piers structure? brother had leak caused by a clog, turned out be cloth caught on the old clay piping. He ran a router down the line and cleaned the clog. don't mean to offend but the more people involved in the solution, the more unnecessary the cost. you can run a hose down the outside clean out to push a clog down the line.

[paredown]

Originally Posted by cmg

does the solution need to be high tech? if the house has a crawl space just remove the skirting nearest the restroom and look for the leak. is the restroom on an outside wall? is this slab on grade or a wood floor on piers structure? brother had leak caused by a clog turned out be cloth caught on the old clay piping. ran a router down the line and cleaned the clog. don't mean to offend but the more people involved in the solution the more unnecessary the cost. you run a hose down the outside clean out to push a clog down the line.

Camera is a pretty efficient way to look at the whole system--and not expensive anymore since the cost/quality has really changed in the last decade.

When we finished a new duplex a couple of years ago, we had problems with backups into the basement bathroom once the new tenants had moved in. We were stumped because we had laid all new waste lines--inspected and all that. Turned out that just past where our guys had made their connection to what we thought were "new" lines (original house was 1860s) connecting to the city line there was a clog (tree roots +). Using a camera meant we could dig outside away from the foundation and fix the problem expeditiously and not second guess ourselves that somehow the main lines had been damaged during back filling etc etc...

The tenants of the house that had been torn down had never had problems--probably because there were multiple leaks in the waste line before it got to that clog...