Educateme asked:
I apologize for the UBER-LONG (but relevant, I think …) narrative before the questions …:
We have experienced three separate incidents of sewage back-up in the basement of our house since January of this year. My husband and I closed on this brand new property in December, 2007, and the builder’s warranty policy remains effective until the end of next month.
We experienced our first back-up on Saturday, January 5, 2008, merely five days after we moved into the house. My memory is somewhat cloudy about this particular incident, but I do recall that one of the builder’s plumbing contractors showed up the next day (which happened to be a Sunday, but we had been told by the builder that during the first year, we are to call the plumber directly, should there be an after-hour emergency, and human waste in the basement was an emegency to us) by which time the sewage had receded a little. He did not do anything at that point, saying that we should observe the situation (!), and that he would return the next day, Monday. By the following morning, the water had gone down to the point where (sorry for the graphic nature of the description) the poo, TP, etc. were starting to get dry (i.e., harder to clean up). He said that there was nothing to be done, one of our young children probably flushed a toy or something down the toilet, and that since the back-up seemed to be resolving itself, as long as WE were careful as to what was flushed down the toilet, we would be fine. SinceI had never seen anything like this in my 35 years and was completely grossed out, I immediately called the builder’s customer service manager, just as I had been instructed to do. She repeated what the plumber had already told me. I then asked her if the plumber had told her what had caused it. No, she said, but everything would be find so long as WE keep an eye on the kids. I also told her I was terrified that it would happen again and that I was worried that the next time it would be worse … what if we the contaminated water got to our belongings … to which, once again, she told me not to worry. I then explained to her that during the “pre-final walk through” approximately two weeks prior, my mom and I noticed that one of the toilets upstairs looked like somebody had had a complete blow-out (so sorry) there. I mean, the inside of the bowl was completely covered with you-know-what …. At the time, I told the accompanying builder’s representative that the mess had to be cleaned up right away. After the sewage back-up, my mom and I were talking about what could have possibly caused it. Then she mentioed the “blow-up,” at which point we started wondering: what if whoever (speculative, but most likely one of the construction workers, not wanting to walk to a Porta-Potty in the bitter Chicago winter) that used the bath room used paper towels instead of toilet paper? I also specifically remembered that there was no toilet paper in the house at the time because as we were inspecting the house, my daughter started saying that she had to use the bathroon; I looked and looked for toilet paper, could not find any, and she and I ended up driving to one of the model homes to use their bath room. There was plenty of industrial-type (i.e., brown, hard) paper towels in the house, however. After my mom and I had this conversation, I had my husband contact the customer service manager (I did not wish to deal with her anymore) to see if her company could at least clean up the basement; after all, this happened only five days after our moving into the house. According to my husband, she became decidedly unprofessional, stating that she did not have the manpower to provide such service, and then asking him if he would like her to do it herself (totally glib …). After that, my husband did the best he could to clean it up himself. When we had our one-moth post-move-in walk through, I exlained to the builder’s representative what had happened; he came back the next day and scrubed the basement floor with a big brush … it had already been over a month since the back-up, however ….
Then we had another back-up a little over a week ago, which caused about half of the basement to be covered in raw sewage. It was so neasty. Consequently, we incurred much material damage (not only various items that were stored there, but the basement floor, studs, etc., are now stained brown). The builder sent one of their plumbing contracters over the next day (which happened to be a Friday), he was not able to find the cause (stating that he needed a longer snake … he determined from the drawing that it was 120 ft. or so from our clean out to where our line connects to the main) and had to return the following Monday. He also brought a camera with him but claimed that he did not see anything. Since the plumber told us we should not use any water, we requested that the builder provide us with lodging, which their cusomer service man
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