My son and DIL bought a first home in North Richland Hills almost two years ago. It is an older home, built in 1952 (that was a good year
), and the sellers refurbished it and flipped it. The sale was "as is", but the home appeared to be in very good shape and it easily passed inspection. However, one major flaw has become a large thorn in my son's side.The sewage line exits the back of the house and makes a beeline across the back yard for the rear fence. My son doesn't know where the actual sewer is located, so he has no guarantee that the pipe from his house actually empties into the municipal sewer line or not, but there appears to be an easement of some kind at the back of the property, because that is where the telephone lines are......and there are no manhole covers on the street at all. The problem is that the line from the house has a dip in it at one one point where it dips down and then back up, and it has become choked with roots. The dip means that even without the root problem, sewage flow out from the house isn't reliable, and the line backs up easily. It makes it difficult to use their washing machine without experiencing frequent backups, and let's not mention the showers and the toilets. He had a plumber out because his own efforts to clear the line himself with a snake were a failure. The plumber - a guy from Benjamin Franklin Plumbing - ran a camera down the pipe, found the root blockage, and cleared it out. Of course, that is a temporary fix as the roots will eventually grow back into the pipe; and the problem with poor flow due to the dip in the line remains.
Anyway, and this is where my son needs help, the upshot is that the sewage line out from the house to the sewer needs to be dug up and replaced. The horizontal distance from the back of the house to the back of the property where, presumably, the municipal sewer easement lies is 125 ft. The Benjamin Franklin guy quoted my son $4,000 to dig up and replace the line from the house to the sewer. That seems like a LOT of money to dig a trench maybe a foot and half deep and lay in the new line. In fact, it seems way overpriced. I suspect that Franklin is taking advantage of my son as a new homeowner. My son is willing to do the digging and backfilling if that will save money on the job. Like a lot of first time homeowners, their mortgage payment takes a BIG bite out of their monthly income, and they just cannot afford $4,000 to fix what seems like a fairly simple problem.
Here is an aerial snapshot from Google Maps of the layout:
If you can help and are available to take this on for a more reasonable price, please PM me and I'll put you in touch with my son.
By the way, he is also a gunsmith and knife-maker, and he might be able to help make this worth your while in other ways.
