TIL my neighbor's basement flood story saved me a huge headache

I ran into my neighbor, Dave, at the hardware store on 118th Avenue last month while grabbing some drywall. He saw my cart and said, "You're not finishing that basement without checking your weeping tile first, are you?" He then told me how he had to tear out his entire new rec room because of a single blocked tile that flooded after a heavy rain. I went home, called a drain guy, and sure enough, one line was almost fully clogged with roots. Has anyone else had a similar close call they caught just in time?

3 comments

3 Comments

cole_mitchell82mo ago

Blocked with roots" - how did you even find that?

butler.shane2mo ago

Oh man, I've been there. Had a sewer line clog so bad with tree roots it was basically a solid block. The plumber had to use this big spinning cutter head on the end of a long cable, took him like three hours. You gotta get it professionally scoped first to see how deep the roots go, otherwise you're just guessing. Sometimes they can just cut them out, but if the pipe's cracked you're looking at a full dig and replace.

lily5744d ago

Did they find the roots just by seeing water backing up in weird places, or was it something more obvious? Man, I totally feel for you on this one. I had a similar thing happen at my old place, and it was such a headache trying to figure out what was going on. That scoping is a smart move though, because from what I've learned, skipping the camera can lead to a lot of wasted effort. Hope they got it sorted out without having to dig the whole thing up.