We arrived at our house in San Diego to what we thought was a very strong mildew smell.. wrong:-( Our house is a 1920 original with original piping, etc.
After the first time using the shower it clogged. We called Quick repair Quick Rooter and they would have someone out the next day. The person (Danny) who was supposed to come was 20 minutes late so I called back and Albert said he would come out himself ASAP which he did.
He unclogged our drain ($65) and we thought all was good however the next day it re-clogged when someone was taking a shower so I called Albert again. He came out the next day and after much work trying to unclog the drain he looked under the house and found out we had a bunch of leaking pipes and a big waste lake:-( It ends up the pipes were busted for awhile with no one knowing and the water was blasting up on the sub-flooring! It was a disaster!
Original diagnosis was that all the piping had to be replaced and all the sub-flooring. I was besides myself since this is a 1920's house with all original wood floors and tiles!
Albert gave us the name of flood busters who came out and began the long process of extracting all the waste water, drying out under the house with three large noisy fans , bacterial odor control, deodorization, etc. The fans ended up being there for over a week to dry out under the house and thank goodness the sub-flooring did not need to be replaced:-)
After the lake was removed Albert and his team got to work on replacing all the pipes! After Two days of very hard work and long hours (last night until 9pm) the pipes were fixed! However, when they tried to run water the water came back into the house from the mainline.. ugh! They snaked it and pulled up tons of sanitary products and roots.. not good! Not good at all! So, in the end they brought someone out to put a camera down the line and found there was a ten foot clog. They said it would take 3 days to replace all the piping! At this point I really couldn't handle anymore as our 9 day vacation was 6 days in with no water and workers constantly inside and outside of our house. Finally, they came up with the plan to just replace the 10 feet of pipe the next day and then come back the next week after we left to replace the rest of the piping!
I have to say that Albert was a real pro! I was very stressed and unhappy about how much time we were without water and just the large unexpected expense. Albert was always very nice and understanding!
In the end, by end of day 7 we had water for the next few days of our stay! The team came back out the next week and had three and a half more days of work to replace all the piping out to the main line. The did a really good job of cleaning up the property and leaving it as they found it! Including moving rock borders and step pavers back to exactly where they originally were!
Our pipes were old and once removed we saw how extremely rusted and damaged they were. This was a job that eventually would have needed to be done regardless.
I did have to haggle a bit on pricing. Thankfully, my neighbor had the same work done a year before so I could see what he paid. I was given a 25% discount on pricing which with the haggling and the 25% off got me very close to his quote. In the end, with the 25% discount I paid $965 for the work to replace the piping under the house (house is 2bed/1ba, 850 sq ft) and $ 1970 to replacement of the pipes from the house out to the main line (46 ft) plus $300 to add a 25ft french drain which we decided to do since we have a outdoor shower right there and the area was being dug up anyways.
In the process of fixing the piping under the house our toilet they accidentally cracked the bottom of our antique toilet. They replaced the bottom of the toilet so we could keep the antique top (which is the part that was very unique) and, of course, at no charge!
What was included in quotes:
Under house - lime spread,replacing drain lines from tub, toilet,bathroom sink, kitchen sink drain lines and laundry room drain lines, replace toilet flange and hauling away all the old cast iron pipes.
Foundation to main line - demo and evacuate 46 ft of soil, remove existing drain line, install new drain line, back fill in dirt and remove old pipes.
In the end, it was tons of work! Albert and his team did a really great job! Our house no longer smells, the yard was left in really good shape and so far so good.. no issues! read more