Sewer Woes and County No's

I am so agitated I almost don't know where to start. I say almost, because when in doubt, I usually default to the very beginning, so I'll try that.

Be forewarned. There's nothing quick and simple, or even entertaining about this post. It's more 'frustrational', if you will, and hopefully, a little informative for you, in case your the next one we're fighting with the county for.

Everyone who has a sewer line also has a branch off the main sewer in the street that serves the property. (Except for a small percentage of homes that share 'sewer taps' with their neighbors, but that's another story, another day).

There's always been an issue between plumbers and municipalities over responsibility.

Almost every time there's a problem, there's a whole lot of he said, she said, not our problem, not our problem either. We, as the plumber, are ALWAYS stuck in the middle of this. I think part of the reason we're stuck in the middle is that we take so much to heart, care so much for our clients, and hate leaving a job unfinished, even if our hands are tied and it's not ours to finish.

You call us because you have a stoppage in your main sewer and fixtures are backing up, overflowing, gurgling, etc..

We come out and perhaps are able to clear your portion of the line, and find that there are further problems within that 'branch line' off the main in the street; in the section that is now off your property and into the county/city 'right-of-way.'

Now what do we do? Whose problem is this? Well, it completely depends on who you talk to. That is a problem in itself.

I'm addressing discrepancies within Dekalb County, GA today.

City of Atlanta has gotten much better through the years, while Dekalb can't get much worse.

Up until about 2-3 years ago, if there was a problem in 'the County tap', we'd call and let them know, and they would come out, install an access clean-out if you didn't have one, and fix the problem. This is because it is their job to maintain the 'right-of-way'.. which is that portion of your yard, near the curb, that utilities run under; that part that they can arbitrarily decide to widen the road into, because it's theirs..not yours (also known as imminent domain).

A couple of years ago, they decided that they weren't going to install the clean-outs any more. You'll recognize if you have one, as they are the big white cap in your yard, closer to the street, that you always try to avoid with the lawnmower. They decided that the homeowner should bear the financial burden of installing this clean-out. They call it a 'property-line clean-out', as it's supposed to be near the line between the property line and the right-of-way. This is not an inexpensive endeavor. These clean-outs are costing homeowners $950.00-$1800.00 and more to install. The County requires them to be a 6" diameter clean-out, as that is typically the size of the 'sewer tap' and you don't want to try and service a larger line through a smaller line..that's asking for trouble.

I was completely undone  the first time I called in for a clean-out and the county dispatcher said 'We don't do that anymore'..Let me tell you, that wasn't the last time I heard that. (I even tried to make the call several more times just to see if someone else would tell me something different.)

Things went quickly downhill from there.

We'd call in with a stopped up county tap and a crew would be dispatched to hand us or our client a copy of the county code.  We've even had them pull up, park several houses down and across the street from our client, and hop out of the truck saying "That's grease in that line..we don't do grease."..Somehow, from all the way across the street and halfway down the block, they determined the roots that were obstructing the tap (10' below the ground) were actually 'grease'. I think I'd like that guy to buy my next lottery ticket!

Okay, so we caved in to the 'homeowner must have property-line clean-out installed' ..After all, the clean-out is technically the homeowner's..They're paying for it, it's on their property (barely), and at least it let's them know, without paying for a service call, whether their sewer stoppage is on their side or the county's.

Just as a side note, by the time you need us to come and clear your sewer and install the required clean-out, many folks are having their sewers replaced at the same time. Often it's just the most cost-effective route. 

Back to the county. 

Recently we've been told that the entire branch line off the main in the street belongs to the property owner.

We've also been told (and so have several of my friends that are plumbers), that now, the county is not going to maintain the right-of-way any more!!

They are now pushing and pushing to make homeowners bear the expense of replacing the sewer tap to the main in the middle of the street. They've been successful many times over. Unless it's our client; then we dig in with both heels and make the calls and fight the fight until it's fixed.

There is no way I can sit back and accept this one. We are no longer talking about a thousand or two for a clean out.We're talking about DOT permits, Right-of-way bonds and permits, 5 million dollars in insurance, and a cost to you of  $10-15-20,000 and up. With all the requirements, there's not a chance you'll be able to shop this out and find 'this other guy will do it for half that'; the mobilization costs alone are in the thousands of dollars.

By the way, we don't do that type of replacement. I have no financial stake in this. This is simply outrage on my part, on your behalf. This is something almost no one is aware of until it happens to them! 

I get many conflicting stories from the county. I keep going back to the County code. Let me run down the code section for you. Until they rewrite it, I'm fighting the good fight.  And even then, I'll fight to keep them from shirking off yet another county service (as our tax bills keep rising):

Sec. 25-220. Maintenance and repair responsibility for building sewer service connections to public sanitary sewer system.

The property owner shall be responsible for maintenance and repair of building sewer service connections to the public sanitary sewer system on private property. DeKalb County shall be responsible for maintenance and repair of building sewer service connections within county street rights-of-way and sanitary sewer easements.

(Ord. No. 90-09, § 1, 5-30-90)

 

I pulled this from www.municode.com. The part I made bold is what I fight on a weekly basis recently. I also have copies in my office of the paperwork the county themselves hand you when you call them for help. Their refusal to uphold their own code. They have denied responsibility twelve different ways from Sunday. They try changing up definitions of 'main line', 'service line', 'tap'...anything it takes to wiggle out of maintaining their tap. The Watershed Management website has an actual sketch (page 5 of the PDF) denoting ownership and responsibility. It takes all the guesswork out of whose is whose; unless you're in a truck with 'Dekalb County' on the side. I know there are financial issues at the county level, but the crews are being paid the same whether they are working or driving around declining to work.

And you know what, if I didn't tell you, show you, in black and white, you'd be heading out to the bank to pay for something that just isn't your responsibility to pay for.

I've called everyone there is to call at the county...from dispatch, to construction, to the director of Watershed Management. I've now contacted our professional organization, the Plumbing and Mechanical Association of Georgia, and the news media.

I hate to tell you, while all this is going on, I have a client (yes, the 'NO' that broke the plumber's back) with an actively overflowing county tap, who's been refused service by the county at least 3 times, while living under the threat of fines, by the County, for the sewage spilling into the yard. Does it get any more ludicrous than this?  

Truth be told, part of why I'm doing this is because I'm tired of looking like an idiot to my clients. I (or my guys and girls) go over the whole process with the client, and then the County comes out and contradicts everything we've told them. I'm paid privately; they must be the objective authority; who looks like the dummy?

Another part is that I spend hours (unpaid) on the phone trying to have this resolved. (It's part of the reason I'm always on another line when you call!)

It should be real cut and dry. I shouldn't have to make phone call after phone call and try to figure out who knows who that can pull a string and get them to do what they're supposed to do anyway. (I had a client that personally knew so and so, who knew so and so, who got their tap repaired after 3 County refusals.)

The biggest part is the complete and total injustice of the situation and the potential cost to my clients...it's beyond unreasonable!

I will probably clean this up a little and submit it to some local papers as an open letter. I will forward it in its entirety to our PMA and the news media.

In the meantime, let's hope your sewers stay functional and by no means do I want you to take the County's word for it when you hear 'NO, we don't do that anymore'.

If I haven't bored you to sleep yet, take care!

~Melissa Cary

Get the Lead Out

Alert:  Lead-free legislation goes into affect nationwide on January 1, 2014.

I'm not a plumber, why should I care?  Well, it will affect the way materials are manufactured, which means the cost of those materials will go up which means the cost of doing business goes up along with your next plumbing bill.

Effective the first of January (Although some states preemptively adopted this legislature in recent years), any product designed, manufactured, bought, sold and installed  for drinking water has to contain no more than .25% lead.  This has revamped the majority of our industry.  Most of you are familiar with brass products being a large component of your plumbing system. Raw brass, on its own, is too brittle to make into faucetry, valves, etc.  Small amounts of lead were introduced into the manufacturing process to allow brass to be molded into the parts we use everyday.

With the impending lead-free legislation, those fittings will no longer be legal.  Manufacturers have gone about reducing the lead content in many ways.  Just the R & D is exorbitantly expensive.  Some have begun adding bismuth instead of lead, some are going non-metallic, a mix of both, and even 'highly secret' but approved methods of 'getting the lead out'.  If the research was expensive, imagine manufacturing costs after revamping formulas, machinery, even labeling and packaging, as the guidelines are very specific in how materials must be identified as 'lead-free'.

You knew I had an ulterior motive in this post. Yes, it's the forewarning that hard costs are going to rise. Material costs on lead-free items have risen 11%-20% already.  This includes most faucets, isolation valves, safety valves, and any other parts that eventually have a hand in bringing water to your sinks.

Still not being completely lead-free (although we've been slowly making the transition for about a year), we've been trying to hold the additional costs down where we can. Come January, that will no longer be an option.

Those of you guys that know us know we won't compromise quality for a cheaper price-tag. We aren't going to start stocking cheaply made non-metallic (plastic) faucets. As a matter of fact, our stocking manufacturer, Wolverine Brass, has been shipping us low-lead compliant faucets for the past year.  The benefit for us is one less toxic element that we are exposed to in our day-to-day. Years ago, our industry made huge strides toward lead-free plumbing.  No lead in solders, fluxes, water lines (Yes, up north, they actually have lead water mains!), etc.  Tomorrow's legislation clinches the deal, at least in regard to plumbing.

Another positive factor in this are the gains in domestic manufacturing. With the certifications necessary to prove that products are lead-free, import products should see a drop in popularity. Even across our manufacturers with overseas plants, the lead-free divisions are here in the U.S. We always try to use American made products whenever possible.

How to Shop for Gas Logs

Photo taken from Chimney Mischief's home page.

This post is inspired by an email we received regarding gas logs.

With just about everything in plumbing there's a process to finding out what will work for you and your home.  First you will want to figure out if you need a vented or non-vented unit.

Vented:
A vented unit should only be considered if you have a functional fireplace.  The best person to determine the functionality of your fireplace would be a chimney sweep.
We recommend:
      Jim with Chimney Mischief
          404-964-6611

Non-Vented:
When considering a non-vented option it is best to pick one with an O2 depletion sensor.

Gas logs come in different sizes, flame patters, log styles, etc.  Before you get your heart set on a particular style or look you need to measure the width and depth of the fire box.  Once you have determined a size, then you can start checking out all the different options available.

Photo taken from Chimney Mischief's home page.

One other thing to keep in mind is that if you are retro fitting an old fireplace, your most economical option is a set that has its own ignition. These units utilize one gas supply into the firebox.

*Home Depot/Lowes only sell these units seasonally and do not offer experts on the subject.

*Hearth & Patio sell these units year round and they provide expert help choosing a unit.


Do you have an old coal burning fireplace?  Don't you fret.  They have gas coal fireplaces too! Check out this bad boy!

Photo taken from Chimney Mischief's home page.

How much will it cost to install one of these fancy gas fireplace options?  Well, a plumber will need to come out and give you an estimate because there are several factors that will determine installation cost but we can tell you that it will be no less than $500. 

If you have any further questions regarding Gas Logs, please feel free to give us a call.

This is not your Mother's faucet!

There was a time, many moons ago, when we could visit your bathroom or kitchen and almost 100% of the time, easily identify the manufacturer of your faucets. There were a handful of popular manufacturers, with very specific handle styles, along with (quite often) an identifying mark on the faucet body or possibly the valve stem inside.

Fast forward to today...
Enter the internet, stage left. There are now hundreds of faucets available, in thousands of handle styles and finishes. Many manufacturers are sharing faucet bodies and parts and then designing their own trim packages. Others are ordering parts from dozens of different vendors and trim packages from yet dozens others.

It has come to the point that if there is no identifying mark, and you don't have paperwork, we've entered the world of Vegas gamblers; the part locator crap-shoot! Ever play the match game when you were little? Your Mom would only set out a dozen or so cards initially, and as you got better and older, she set out more and more until all the cards were on the table. Bet you didn't always get it right..We don't either.

Hop online sometime to any online re-seller and just look at how many manufacturers are represented.  There are thousands.  Even some that we have never heard of.  Even worse, some manufacturers don't even display a name or logo on their products!
Now check out how may different styles each manufacturer or faucet line has to offer. Now compare the styles.  Ever play the 'Find the differences' game? We play it every day. When we can't find them all, the client gets very angry with us.

Yes, I know you're the one living with the faucet that doesn't work or you're watching your money drip down the drain (especially with the cost of water these days), and you've charged "professionals" with the task of correcting the problem, and you're just waiting and waiting and then the wrong parts come; we don't know they're the wrong parts until we waste more of your time trying to get them to work in your faucet. You thought we knew what we were doing. That's your side of the story and you're sticking to it.
 
Enter our side, stage right.  Your faucet is leaking. We come to fix it. The inner workings are not field serviceable. The faucet looks pretty expensive and you want it repaired, not replaced. Your plumber takes pictures and/or measurements, and brings them back to Michelle at the shop. And now the fun begins. Well, in all honesty, it ceased being fun years ago when we realized a roulette wheel had better odds of paying out.

Michelle will proceed to spend whatever time it takes, sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes HOURS trying to match up faucets and repair parts to fix your problem. This is not an exact science. There is no crystal ball we can look into that shows us the parts.  It's more like a magic 8-ball that reads out "signs point to NO" or "Outlook not so good". There's also no huge local warehouse that stocks thousands of obscure faucet parts from countless manufacturer's and dozens of countries that we can go to in order to physically play the match game.

More often than not, Michelle will work her magic and manages to locate the correct parts. Sometimes fate steps in to keep her humble and she is unable to match them.  Or the parts look similar enough to give them a try.  So we schedule another visit to give it a whirl, and if they don't work we have to re-assess, make comparisons and try again.

You think YOU are frustrated by now? Michelle has been paid to do the research, often the parts have already been paid for, our guys and/or girls have been paid to run the trial and error scenario, and now you, the customer, are unhappy.  Typically the client hasn't been charged (and won't be until we find a solution). You certainly aren't being charged for all the time that went into the process.
We usually will charge you simply for the repair after the dust has settled. And guess what?  If Michelle managed to find the parts at no charge from a manufacturer, we pass that savings on to you!

We try very hard to get it right the first time in order to keep our cost low, and your satisfaction high.  Sometimes it is no easy task and now you know why. 

--Melissa Cary

Plumbing 101

Knowing Plumbing
There comes a time when everyone needs a plumber.  The best way to choose one is by word of mouth or a trusted referral.  Of course, the more you know about your plumbing system the happier you will be with the plumber you ultimately choose.  Hence this blog.  We have created it to give you some plumbing basics to increase your comfort level.  So strap on your tool belt and let's see what's down there!


Know Your Pressure Points
All water distribution systems are under pressure.  Normal home pressure should range from 50 to 80 pounds per square inch (psi).   If the pressure is higher, it can cause your water heater to blow off at the safety valve or your toilet to run constantly.  Not good.  If it is lower, it can take a long time for your bathtub to fill up and your toilet to re-fill.  You can test the pressure with a pressure gauge at the front and rear of your home.  High pressure can be alleviated by having a Pressure Reducing Valve (PRV) installed.  Low pressure may be caused by several factors, so repairs will vary.  Ask your plumber to show you how to shut off the water coming into your home.  That will be good to know in an emergency.

PVC? ABS? HUH?
Drains are the pipes that carry waste and water away from your fixtures, sinks, showers and toilets.  (They are completely separate from you water distribution system).  Drains can be made of PVC (a white plastic pipe), ABS (a black plastic pipe), or cast iron.  It is big trouble when they get clogged or stopped up.  But you can reduce your chances of a clog.  In the bathroom, avoid flushing feminine hygiene products or baby wipes down the toilets-even if they are "flushable."  In the kitchen, avoid pouring grease down your sink.  Refrain from stuffing fibrous veggies like celery down your disposal.  And NEVER put starches like rice or pasta down there as the will react with oils and hot water to become a gooey sludge.  YUCK!

Tanks or No Tanks
There are two main types of water heaters: Standard tank, or tank-less.  Tank heaters can be either gas or electric.  They are not so efficient as they use energy to keep a steady water temperature, whether in use or not.  Tankless heaters are extremely efficient as they only heat the water being used at that time.  Gas units are the most common and are available in interior and exterior models.  They are more expensive, but can last twice as long as a tank with additional savings on your gas bill.