Fear the Plumber: Sewer Back-ups Suck
The thing about owning rental property is that you’re always on duty. It doesn’t matter if you’re on vacation, at your day job, or in bed getting a good night’s sleep. Unless you’ve got someone else you’re paying to answer the phone (you’re making more money than I am), then you’re on duty 24/7.
Now, I’ve put a lot of effort into ensuring my buildings are well maintained which means I don’t have a lot of maintenance problems. If there’s a problem, I like to fix it as quickly as I can. This can prevent my phone from ringing in the middle of the night. On Tuesday of this week, while I was out of town visiting my parents, I received a voice mail early in the morning informing me there was sewage backing up into the tub of a basement unit. This is seriously bad news.
A sewer back-up can cause major damage, if not addressed quickly. Normally, before I spend any money with a tradesman, I will go out and see if I can solve the problem myself. While this costs me time, it has most certainly saved me money in the past when I can solve the problem. In this case I was out of town, so I had no choice; call the plumber.
On a recommendation from a co-worker a few years ago I regularly use Accent Plumbing & Heating. They’re not the cheapest plumber out there, but they’ve gotten me out of more than one jam in the past and their customer service is excellent. It’s worth the extra money to know the job’s going to get done fast and right. Anyway, I called them again this time to get it sorted out.
On a side note – my tenant who complained about the back-up informed me in her voice mail that she doesn’t have a phone at the moment. So this led to the added difficulty of coordinating the plumber through the neighbor and her phone. Additionally, it probably means that she has had her phone cut off for not paying her bill and I’m likely to have some issues collecting her rent next month. Oh joy.
$472.34 later my sewer line is completely cleared out and working properly. Yikes! It seems they had to ‘power auger‘ out the main sewer line some 90 feet all the way to the road. This service runs $369.00 + my $49.00 call-out fee. Like I said, the plumber is not cheap, but I don’t own a power auger so I couldn’t solve the problem anyway.
