Jmtandrews
New Member
Hey everyone,
Looking to buy a house (late 90s in North Texas, so approximately a 1hr radius around DFW) and opted to get the sewer lines scoped in addition to the rest of the inspection. There are two separate lines running to the septic tank. The line from supply to the cleanouts came back just fine. I'm still working on getting the video and hopefully will post it when it's available.
In one line, there's a 10-15 ft belly under the home; there's also been some foundation work done, so this seems like it's probably caused by the shifting of the ground that's common to the region. Maybe an issue, maybe not. Got quoted 20k to replace the line, indicating there's around 50ft of digging to be done beneath the home.
The other line revealed a 50-60 ft belly in the yard, and the plumber claims that the whole line is not deep enough for a proper fall, so would replace the whole line (around 10 feet under the home), probably around 15k or so.
I'm not any sort of plumber or tradesman, and I don't own the home, so I can't verify if the under-home belly would be a problem or not (though my suspicion is that there's not a problem yet). I assume the improperly plumbed other line is more likely to be an immediate issue. Either way, just trying to get a feel for if these are reasonable estimates and how much in concessions I could ask the seller for (or if I should get another opinion). For reference, the plumbers charged me $350 for the scoping and an additional $250 to pull & re-set a toilet to get access to the other line. This seems expensive -- my usual plumbers, also in North Texas, charged me $100 for the toilet pull & reset (and $2000 to re-do all the gas plumbing in my current home). Unfortunately, they have a very narrow radius or I would 100% have used them for this instead.
Looking to buy a house (late 90s in North Texas, so approximately a 1hr radius around DFW) and opted to get the sewer lines scoped in addition to the rest of the inspection. There are two separate lines running to the septic tank. The line from supply to the cleanouts came back just fine. I'm still working on getting the video and hopefully will post it when it's available.
In one line, there's a 10-15 ft belly under the home; there's also been some foundation work done, so this seems like it's probably caused by the shifting of the ground that's common to the region. Maybe an issue, maybe not. Got quoted 20k to replace the line, indicating there's around 50ft of digging to be done beneath the home.
The other line revealed a 50-60 ft belly in the yard, and the plumber claims that the whole line is not deep enough for a proper fall, so would replace the whole line (around 10 feet under the home), probably around 15k or so.
I'm not any sort of plumber or tradesman, and I don't own the home, so I can't verify if the under-home belly would be a problem or not (though my suspicion is that there's not a problem yet). I assume the improperly plumbed other line is more likely to be an immediate issue. Either way, just trying to get a feel for if these are reasonable estimates and how much in concessions I could ask the seller for (or if I should get another opinion). For reference, the plumbers charged me $350 for the scoping and an additional $250 to pull & re-set a toilet to get access to the other line. This seems expensive -- my usual plumbers, also in North Texas, charged me $100 for the toilet pull & reset (and $2000 to re-do all the gas plumbing in my current home). Unfortunately, they have a very narrow radius or I would 100% have used them for this instead.
