misterjoe
Member
Hi all -- I own a duplex that I rent out in Gloucester City, NJ. The city itself has a combined sewer and my duplex is at the end of the street, right where the sh*t, literally, rolls down hill.
I've had the house for about 18 months and there has easily been 10 times where water ends up in the basement. We've attacked it several ways, replacing a bad check valve approximately 20 ft in the basement, parging the walls around the property, cleaning gutters, adding a mat over bilco doors (some daylight so heavy rains would hit it), upgraded our sump pump to the commercial unit they use in restaurants, tried to hit every possible water entry point with some kind of seal...all for naught.
The other day, the city sewer just inexplicably got clogged and since I'm the first pipe before, my pipe fills up. The checkvalve does its job but it prevents the house waste from exiting to the sewer, and then the backfill just finds the path of least resistance -- typically coming out of the washing machine (gross!) and the drain pipe which is obviously somewhat open for the flex pipe between washer and the drainage.
I'm at my wits end on what to do. Obviously this is waste water that hits the basement floor, my tenant complains, it needs to be dry-vac'd up, etc.
My plumber and my handyman told me yesterday -- and I don't quite understand what this all means -- that the 4 inch pipe outside moves to a 5 inch cast iron pipe inside, so a "disk" basically doesn't work. I don't know what disk they're referring to, or the significance in the different sizes of the piping. The house itself used to be a laundromat before it was changed in zoning many years ago, so I suspect that's why there is larger piping in the home?
I just want to prevent the backfill in the basement and in the house...it's disgusting, and the city has told me its my problem, not theirs. So if so, what's the solution? Because this can't be right...
I've had the house for about 18 months and there has easily been 10 times where water ends up in the basement. We've attacked it several ways, replacing a bad check valve approximately 20 ft in the basement, parging the walls around the property, cleaning gutters, adding a mat over bilco doors (some daylight so heavy rains would hit it), upgraded our sump pump to the commercial unit they use in restaurants, tried to hit every possible water entry point with some kind of seal...all for naught.
The other day, the city sewer just inexplicably got clogged and since I'm the first pipe before, my pipe fills up. The checkvalve does its job but it prevents the house waste from exiting to the sewer, and then the backfill just finds the path of least resistance -- typically coming out of the washing machine (gross!) and the drain pipe which is obviously somewhat open for the flex pipe between washer and the drainage.
I'm at my wits end on what to do. Obviously this is waste water that hits the basement floor, my tenant complains, it needs to be dry-vac'd up, etc.
My plumber and my handyman told me yesterday -- and I don't quite understand what this all means -- that the 4 inch pipe outside moves to a 5 inch cast iron pipe inside, so a "disk" basically doesn't work. I don't know what disk they're referring to, or the significance in the different sizes of the piping. The house itself used to be a laundromat before it was changed in zoning many years ago, so I suspect that's why there is larger piping in the home?
I just want to prevent the backfill in the basement and in the house...it's disgusting, and the city has told me its my problem, not theirs. So if so, what's the solution? Because this can't be right...