Replacing Drain Waste Pipes Under the House in Land Park

Our home was built in 1948, and we live in an older community of homes in Land Park, Sacramento, the neighborhood of the famous Orangeburg sewer lines. Why in the world anybody would ever have thought it was a good idea to use tarpaper for a sewer line is beyond me. It was after the wars and a few years before I was born; at a time I imagine the country was under economic recovery and reeling from the then-pressing Korean War, but still. People, where were your heads? When we bought our home, the previous owners gave us photographs of the sewer line replacement in 2000. It was done by Trenchless, and it wasn’t a trenchless sewer line. It was a whole new sewer line.

On top of this, during our subsequent kitchen and bath remodels, we replaced our horizontal water pipes with copper. It never occurred to us that we could have problems with the cast iron drain waste pipes under our house. My husband was certain our washing machine line was plugged because a few weeks ago the water from our washer backed up into our kitchen sink. Then our shower began backing up. My husband poured Drano down the shower drain, which worked, but that is the lowest drain in the house, and should easily drain. Moreover, nobody should ever really use Drano. It is not a safe product for your drains.

Something was not right.

Being a Sacramento Realtor, I realize the value of sewer inspections, and we routinely advise our buyers to request plumbing inspections of varying sorts. I am familiar with sewer line inspections, too, and called Trenchless to come over. They’ve always done a good job for my clients, although they no longer provide the service as a pre-inspection for real estate agents. They’re right down the street on Broadway, and Max enjoys a pretty good reputation among my peers. He looked at my photos and identified the sewer clean-out. Good thing I had saved the photos. Hooray for Polaroid.

My husband did not really understand why I was so gung ho on doing a sewer inspection, but now I am very glad that we did. First, we discovered the doofus guy who poured the cement for our driveway covered up our sewer clean-out. He installed a cap over the sewer clean-out but he missed it by about a foot. Now we have to chop up part of our concrete work to dig out the old clean-out. Thanks, doofus cement dude. Thanks for walking around in the wet cement, too, and leaving your big fat ugly footprints, you moron.

We are also replacing 40 feet of the corroded and rusted cast-iron drain waste pipes under the house up to where it meets the new sewer line. I had a closing yesterday for a short sale home in Elk Grove, but that commission check is going to Trenchless, so it’s not like I made any money yesterday. I worked on the sale of that short sale since last April. Poof. Gone. Such is the life of a Sacramento Realtor.