Sewerage on the lawn... day 3

[Wild Dingo]

On Sundy our sewer became blocked... no emergency plumbers out here... so yesty I give a few a call and finally found one who would come out here to the house... he turns up at 9am and starts trying to find it... 1pm comes around he rings his boss and its suggested one of us goes into Bunbury to get the site map of the sewer run... so I do that thinkin to save some money... saved an hour come back give the plumber the peice of paper from the water authority showing the locations of the sewer access points

4pm he knocks of still not having found it says he will come back in the morning with an excavator to drag up the driveway to find the thing... Im well phissed by now seeing huge sums of money flyin out the door... so this morning I get his boss on the phone who I had to reassure that his bill would be paid that I was understandably phissed of as we have little kids here and 2 days and rising of actual physical crap in the back yard is getting way over the top and that the costs are getting out of control but yes he would be paid I would pursue the water authority for some recompence later just get the friggin thing fixed TODAY...

So theyre on their way out now... must be nice eh? so far 5 and half hours at 80 per hour for yesty and this morning add on another 100 per for the excavator and the 80per for the plumber and its gettin friggin expensive!!!

Thing is that the plumber has to get approval from the water authority to do the sewer line itself... he can only FIND it when he finds it he has to down tools ring and get a number and approval to continue... the water authority is known to tell them that they will do the job and thats it at that point he leaves we pay him and we then wait for the bloody water authority to send someone from Perth... up to a week!!...

Now this morning I asked him why the blazes he didnt just send the sodding bill to the water authority since its not in the house plumbing but in the water authorities sewer run "we can only invoice the water authority for finding the problem in the sewer run and they will pay us a fee of $180... so we will be out of pocket if you dont pay the rest of the account" So presently it looks like costing US $1000+ to find a problem in the water authorities sewer line PLUS accomadation costs cause today is it we cant stay here any longer I mean it seriously REEKS! cant be good especially for the younger ones...

IF its the water authorities sewer that is broken backed up whatever and the plumber is only given a token fee to "find" the problem in the sewer run but has racked up a 1000 plus bill to the owner for finding the problem is in the sewer line and then locating it from their plans that are friggin wrong (the outlet is NOT where the site plans say they are which is why the excavator) then why the hell does the owner get shafted? I dont mind paying the 3 hours it took to find that its not in the yard runs TO the sewer but for the rest the bloody water authority should be billed for it

AND without checking Id almost bet my bottom dollar that we will be billed for the travel and time of the bloody water authority plumber to come her from Perth and fix it

I am steadily preparing myself for a war of words with the water authority and legal eagles

okay just a bloody gripe...

[Dan]

No doubt it's different all over australia but when my sewer blocked up, this is what happened. Called out the plumber dude on a sunday afternoon. He tried but couldn't unblock it, we could get a rough idea where the problem was though by listening for where the auger had got to. He came back on wednesday I think (lucky I'm the sole occupant) with excavator and started digging for the council inspection point. The excavator "found" the pipe about a meter down at which point the hole started to fill with the 4 day old contents of a 20m run of pipe. Tree roots were discovered immediately after the inspection point (on the council side ). Plumber dude rings council, they send a bloke to look in the hole. He says, yep, that's on our side, can you blokes fix it and send us the bill? Plumber dude says yep, I'll go and get the bits. So he fixed it and brought the inspection point up to ground level where it's easy to find. All up he would have spent about 6-7 hours on it and it cost me nothing (but it was a close call).

[Scooterscum]

Sorry to hear your tale of woes Wild Dingo. My story, like Dan's is much nicer
We had a sewage blockage which the plumber cleared with an electric eel. A week later it blocked again. This time I told the missus (I was off to work) to call the council and get a set of plans so we could work out where the plumbing ran.
The council asked the missus if she wanted them to come out and check it. Within the hour a couple of blokes turned up, cleared the blockage with high pressure, then ran their camera thingy down it and found tree roots. The council guy said it was too close to call whether it was our problem or councils so said they would do it. Within an hour there were three trucks, an excavator and about 8 blokes digging up the back yard. Spent about 5 hours and fixed the problem (even though it ended up being on our property )
I know it's a hard story to believe (the missus took photos which she had to show me to convince me it really happened!! )
I dropped a carton of and a thankyou letter to the council shed. Man was I happy.
Now if I could just get Ergon Energy to fix my bloody feed line I'd be wrapped