ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — When Paulette Hardiman called the City of St. John’s over problems with a backup associated with the lateral servicing her Devine Place home, workers who showed up advised her to cut a hole in her living room floor.
According to the west-end homeowner, the workers said they aren’t qualified to work in confined spaces, as her cleanout pipe for the lateral is in an enclosed crawl space under the house.
A lateral is the underground line outside a house that takes sewage to the city system running under the street.
Hardiman’s lateral is suspected of being blocked somewhere — it’s an aging street, as her house was built in the late 1960s or early ‘70s.
They aren't able to bath or do laundry without it backing up into the kitchen sink and risking a worsening of the problem. Their toilet flushes, but also comes up in the sink. They can use the facilities in another family home on the street for such things, but that’s not a permanent solution.
The city will replace laterals for a bargain $500 fee for a single-residence home (not a rental property). Before that, they will use a snake device to try to unclog the lateral.
Common causes of blockages include tree roots, but sometimes it’s because the material that the aging pipes are made of are breaking down, depending on the type used at the time of construction, if there haven't been infrastructure upgrades over the years.
For many people around the city, their cleanout pipe — which juts out of the ground — is outside their house, providing easy access for the city, or any plumber. (There is a $100 charge for the city to provide service provided no digging is required, which can be much cheaper than going private to deal with the problem, depending on the circumstances.)
But in Hardiman’s case, that pipe is in the crawl space.
Access to the three-foot-high crawl space is through a hatch in her kitchen, which is next to the living room. The hole is pretty roomy.
Her furnace is down there, and she said furnace technicians were able to disassemble her old furnace and install a new one.
But she said the city workers wouldn’t go down into the crawl space, which has a concrete floor, and make their way over to the cleanout pipe located under the living room, about seven feet away.
They advised her to get a private plumber or cut the hole in the living room. Otherwise, she said, there’s nothing they can do.
A plumber quoted $600, but said it may not work.
Hardiman would rather the city just replace the lateral, as she said others on the street have had to have that work done and the rest figure their time is coming. It’s the ultimate solution.
“We have had some issues, but we have never had it as bad as it is now,” Hardiman said.
Digging up the lateral may be an extreme action to the city at this point, she said, but cutting her living room floor and beams underneath is more extreme, as she fears it will compromise the structure, and she won't do it.
“The city passed the construction of these houses, so the issue should have been seen then, or someone looked the other way when these houses were built,” Hardiman said.
But standards and practices being different five decades ago don’t help the conundrum she is in now.
Hardiman said she and her husband are both seniors on a fixed income, paying taxes for years and "when you have trouble with what is an essential service you're left to figure it out for yourself."
Friday she said the city told her again it won’t even look at it and she has to have a plumber come in and deal with it.
Asked to comment on the problem, the city’s public works department, through a statement, said if there is not enough space for staff and equipment to work in an area safely with a reasonable amount of accessibility, the city is unable to do the work.
It is the homeowner's responsibility to provide proper access to the sewer cleanout, the city said.
Barb Sweet is an enterprise reporter in St. John’s.
