- Tom BrezsnyLearn To Go With The Flow!
Time for a quick show of hands…how many homeowners have the faintest idea about what shape their sewer lateral pipes are in? If you didn’t raise your hand, pay attention and read on…
I know, sewer laterals aren’t exactly the kind of warm and fuzzy you look forward to reading about over a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning. It’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it. Might as well be me since the subject of sewer laterals has been on my mind lately.
All that infrastructure underlying our neighborhoods is usually out of sight and out of mind for most of us. We flip a switch, turn on a faucet or flush a toilet and typically, we don’t give much thought to what happens next, as long as the lights come on and we can wash our clothes and the toilets are clean enough for our dogs to drink out of…
But times are changing for homeowners living on the urban service line. And some of those changes are going to surprise people when they decide to sell their homes. The City and County have enacted new ordinances requiring inspection and certification of sewer lateral lines before individual homes sell and as part of the process of doing an addition or an ADU or major remodel.
Over the last year, I’ve witnessed more than a few surprises related to lateral lines that have “surfaced” in the 11th hour of escrows. Ones that necessitated tens of thousands of dollars of unanticipated expense. My suggestion: Anyone considering selling or adding on should get a jump on finding out what’s required and what they have to do to meet the guidelines. They aren’t going to go away.
The next in our series of informational talks for homeowners I’m sponsoring features local expert Mike Murrow from Bellows Plumbing. He’ll be going over the guidelines and covering everything you never knew you needed to know about your sewer lateral line. It’s a chance to get the whole down low on the flow straight from the plumber’s mouth.
