Plumbers all have horror stories of things they have seen, but so do the people who hire them. A lot of people have horror stories about plumbing disasters that have occurred in their homes, and most of these stories have one thing in common: an inept plumbing service. Plumbing emergencies are never pleasant. Water damage is real and sewage is disgusting. Just because we are plumbers doesn’t mean we like it more than you, but the role of a plumbing service is to properly deal with the water and sewage quickly to turn a disaster into a resolvable situation.
If you choose the wrong plumbing service then what could have been a simple situation can turn into a plumbing disaster. Many people have found themselves in this spot. The problem with making this one very large mistake is that once it happens it cannot be undone. From this point on you will have to deal with the original plumbing issue, the new plumbing issues, and the eventual clean-up of whatever disaster has taken place in your home. With that in mind, now might be a good time to check your homeowner’s policy to see if you are covered if a plumber damages your home.
A Simple Clog Turns Into a Nightmare
Take the story of Bobby and Jamie. Bobby and Jamie are an old retired couple who live in a senior retirement community. They own a duplex in the neighborhood and enjoy relaxing most days, but on one sunny day in June relaxing was the very opposite of what they were doing. Bobby woke up and shuffled downstairs to get a cup of coffee before heading up to do his business. Everything was going fine until Bobby turned around to flush the toilet and he heard Jamie scream in disgust. It turned out that when he flushed the toilet the raw sewage was popping out of the bathroom drain.
At first, the situation was comical to Bobby, who rarely saw his wife get rattled, but quickly the couple revealed that they had a plumbing situation on their hands. They checked the guidebook and website of their community and realized that plumbing repairs fell on them since they owned half of the duplex. This was a bit shocking to Jamie who thought that a perk of living in a retirement community was not dealing with this type of thing, but Bobby went ahead and found a company online that offered no service fees to make a diagnostic call.
Bobby liked this idea because he didn’t want to pay more for services he didn’t need. Especially if it was just a toilet clog. He wasn’t about to pay one more dime than he had to when all he really thought he needed was a plunger with a bit more gumption. Jamie didn’t care who was called, so long as they got her bathtub empty again. The stench and the sight of the sewage were more than she could bear and she couldn’t entertain guests this way.
The two didn’t do too much to prepare outside of learning very quickly that they shouldn’t flush the toilet anymore if they could avoid it. Eventually, someone from the plumbing service showed up and asked what was going on. He didn’t wear a uniform and arrived in just a normal pickup truck, but he did seem to know what he was doing and honored the free diagnostic quote that they had talked about on the phone so Bobby let the other stuff go. This guy spoke easily about plumbing so he thought that he was just a working-class man just like himself. He liked that idea. Jamie’s only concern was fixing the problem and she assumed her husband had screened the plumbing service so she stepped aside and led him up to the bathroom.
The young plumber took a look at the toilet and then took a look at the bathtub and paused for a second. This might have been their first indication that he wasn’t quite prepared for this type of job, which would not have been surprising if Bobby had realized that he was unlicensed. Unfortunately, Bobby did very little research before calling the plumbing service. All he really wanted was someone to come quickly who worked within his budget. He didn’t realize what would come from making that one small mistake to start.
The inexperienced plumber took a few more minutes to poke around the bathroom peering under the sink and running water for a bit to check for clogs in other places. Satisfied that he didn’t see any other reasons to suspect a clog outside of the toilet, he said that he would just run an auger into the sewer line and that would clean out whatever clog was in there. The plumber assumed that this older couple had accidentally knocked something into the toilet or used flushable wipes or something. He discounted the fact that something larger might be brewing in the pipes, which was another mistake on his behalf.
It turned out that there was a tree foot in the sewage line below the toilet. Water flows from the top to the bottom within the main line. The root was blocking the sewage line and needed to be dealt with outside of the home by running a snake or hydro jetting the main sewage line. However, due to his inexperience, he didn’t think through the logical way water flows to account for why the sewage might be coming out of the bathtub. Instead, he attempted to solve the issue locally by addressing just the toilet clog. It’s hard to guess what he had in mind, but his next step was one that would destroy the bathroom and make Bobby regret his quick choice when finding a plumbing service.
Instead of looking into the tree root more, the plumber decided to remove the toilet with the hope of finding the clog under the toilet. However, common sense tells you the clog would be outside of the home if caused by a tree root since tree roots don’t often grow up. When the toilet was lifted from its seal on the ground raw sewage flowed out across the bathroom floor. Soon instead of sewage coming out in a controlled fashion from the bathtub, it was just spilling out of the open hole. To make matters worse, the water and sewage started seeping out into the hallway. Jamie was downstairs in the kitchen and soon started yelling because sewage was dripping from the ceiling. The exposed toilet hole made it easy for the water and sewage to find