Frogholm and drains
A maintenance guy knocked on the door at 10:00 this morning. Luckily I was up and dressed, as I’d forgotten they were scheduled to come today (I only just got the letter, they’re not really good about giving a lot of advance warning on these things.) After my deck drains being clogged for years (and me paying myself to have a plumber come out and fix the damned thing two years ago) they’ve finally started coming around once a year to snake the drains.
A little bit of background. I live in a basement apartment. The upper floors have balconies, and the ground floor has sunken decks, with concrete walls that are about chest/shoulder height. You know how air conditioning units have condensation that drips off them? The A/C units in my building all drain down through a little pipe that leads out onto my deck. One of my neighbors claimed that the irrigation system was leaking into her deck, but I know the water is air conditioning runoff, because when I hear one of my neighbor’s A/C unit’s kick in, water almost immediately starts coming out of the pipe in the wall. It’s simple observation people. The walls of my sunken deck are never wet, thus the water is NOT coming from rainfall or the sprinklers.
A couple of inches away from the pipe is a drain in the floor of the deck that leads to a dry well. The first several years I lived here, there were no problems, but then, eventually, the drain clogged, and my deck started flooding. Apparently the lifespan of a dry well is about 30 years, and then they tend to get choked up with silt. Guess how old my condo is? Yep, around 35 years old. In my case, I suspect my dry well is under the tree in the front lawn and it’s probably full of both silt and tree roots.
At any rate, my dry well clogged up, and after the water trapped on the deck getting so bad that it backed up into the house one summer, I bought a wet/dry vac and when it gets too wet out there, I go out and vacuum up the water and dump it out over the top of my sunken deck into the bushes. The flooded deck (aka the cee-ment pond) has attracted frogs, thus naming my condo Frogholm. Over the years, they have alternately ignored the problem and made it worse. For example, powerwashing the decks. Because more water down a clogged train is sure the fix the problem, right? Finally a year or two ago my neighbor had someone successfully clear his drains, and I called the same plumber and got mine cleared out too. Then, after I’d paid to have my own drains cleared, the condo association finally decided to have someone come in and clear them. *facepalm* Thanks guys. Coulda told me and saved me the money.
Last year I was at work and missed the plumber's visit. Which I figure isn't a big deal, since my drains are already cleared. But when I got the notice letter for their second visit I was threatened with them breaking into my house and charging me for breaking in if I wasn’t home to let them into my condo to do exterior maintenance that I’d already paid for myself. Because nobody told me that they were finally planning to address the problem. Bastards.
Today I told the guy that it really didn’t need to be snaked. It’s been done twice in the past three years, and it’s not currently clogged. He was fine with checking it off as “done” without doing the work. And I was cool with that, since last year the guy actually damaged the drain pipe, which goes down and takes a 90 degree turn, because he drilled straight down through the PVC and into the ground. I wasn’t really eager to have someone who had no idea what they were doing go at my exterior pipes again. So he was happy (less work) and I was happy (no compounding the damage from last year).
A little bit of background. I live in a basement apartment. The upper floors have balconies, and the ground floor has sunken decks, with concrete walls that are about chest/shoulder height. You know how air conditioning units have condensation that drips off them? The A/C units in my building all drain down through a little pipe that leads out onto my deck. One of my neighbors claimed that the irrigation system was leaking into her deck, but I know the water is air conditioning runoff, because when I hear one of my neighbor’s A/C unit’s kick in, water almost immediately starts coming out of the pipe in the wall. It’s simple observation people. The walls of my sunken deck are never wet, thus the water is NOT coming from rainfall or the sprinklers.
A couple of inches away from the pipe is a drain in the floor of the deck that leads to a dry well. The first several years I lived here, there were no problems, but then, eventually, the drain clogged, and my deck started flooding. Apparently the lifespan of a dry well is about 30 years, and then they tend to get choked up with silt. Guess how old my condo is? Yep, around 35 years old. In my case, I suspect my dry well is under the tree in the front lawn and it’s probably full of both silt and tree roots.
At any rate, my dry well clogged up, and after the water trapped on the deck getting so bad that it backed up into the house one summer, I bought a wet/dry vac and when it gets too wet out there, I go out and vacuum up the water and dump it out over the top of my sunken deck into the bushes. The flooded deck (aka the cee-ment pond) has attracted frogs, thus naming my condo Frogholm. Over the years, they have alternately ignored the problem and made it worse. For example, powerwashing the decks. Because more water down a clogged train is sure the fix the problem, right? Finally a year or two ago my neighbor had someone successfully clear his drains, and I called the same plumber and got mine cleared out too. Then, after I’d paid to have my own drains cleared, the condo association finally decided to have someone come in and clear them. *facepalm* Thanks guys. Coulda told me and saved me the money.
Last year I was at work and missed the plumber's visit. Which I figure isn't a big deal, since my drains are already cleared. But when I got the notice letter for their second visit I was threatened with them breaking into my house and charging me for breaking in if I wasn’t home to let them into my condo to do exterior maintenance that I’d already paid for myself. Because nobody told me that they were finally planning to address the problem. Bastards.
Today I told the guy that it really didn’t need to be snaked. It’s been done twice in the past three years, and it’s not currently clogged. He was fine with checking it off as “done” without doing the work. And I was cool with that, since last year the guy actually damaged the drain pipe, which goes down and takes a 90 degree turn, because he drilled straight down through the PVC and into the ground. I wasn’t really eager to have someone who had no idea what they were doing go at my exterior pipes again. So he was happy (less work) and I was happy (no compounding the damage from last year).