Who to call about storm drains?
So which one of the various people who have been working on our house, should have told us our gutter and storm/roof drain pipe thing are not done properly – the roofer, the handyman/contractor or the plumber? It’s so frustrating today with this downpour to have a flood in our backyard and water in our…
So which one of the various people who have been working on our house, should have told us our gutter and storm/roof drain pipe thing are not done properly – the roofer, the handyman/contractor or the plumber? It’s so frustrating today with this downpour to have a flood in our backyard and water in our basement simply because none of the guys hired to work on the house were alarmed in any way by the drain for the gutter off the roof being sealed up, and the gutter instead being aimed out into the yard. Now that we know we have to direct the water out of the yard and away from the foundation more effectively, who do we call to repair the sealed off storm/gutter drain and put in other kinds of drains in the yard? Is that a plumber or roofer’s job? I don’t feel like calling our roofer again, since he was so cavalier about the drainage from the roof when I had asked him about it weeks ago.
Yeshwant, that’s what I’ve been researching as well. It seems a good idea for collecting water to use in the yard, and reducing the amount sent down the storm sewer as well.
Our roof also drained right into the neighbor’s backyard, but the gutter is now connected to the sewer. The roofer did this without us asking when we put on a new roof. So far it’s worked fine. Our inspector had recommended running a hose for several hours into the storm sewer pipe to see if it worked. We didn’t, but were lucky.
One option might also be to have rainwater barrels. You could use the water for gardening (not in this season) and it would take some of the load off the sewer. A cover, mosquito dunks or a few mosquito fish would take care of the mosquitos. There is a gizmo available that even diverts the water back into the storm sewer when the barrel is full. I plan to do that this spring.
Thanks 12:04 for the information and advice. Yes we’re sure the storm drain was capped intentionally by the flipper seller because it was clogged, or because the sewer main was clogged (we had to have it snaked a couple weeks ago and it looked like it had not been snaked in years). This is not the first weird plumbing mistake we’ve found this seller did in the house. We’ve already called some plumbers so we can get to work on this storm sewer and drainage issue. As for the inspector being liable, 2:19, sadly there’s no recourse for buyers when an inspector overlooks problems. My friend bought a house that turned out to have serious foundation issues that should have been obvious to any engineer, but her inspector didn’t breathe one word about it. She sued him, but NYS law protects the inspectors and she lost. If I had any advice after my friend’s experience and my own, I’d say don’t hire your realtor’s engineer or inspector. Get your own. Have more than one look at the house, get more than one opinion, despite the pressure the seller and both realtors will be putting on you to close the deal. Ignore them.
Your engineer provided inadequate service. They should be liable somehow for this inadequacy.
After living in our house for several years, we, too, discovered that our downspout had been directly into a neighboring property by the previous owner. Our roofer discovered this. A plumber repaired this, reconnecting the downspout into the sewer line and also putting proper drainage in the back garden. While a roofer should have noticed this (and probably the inspector), a plumber must repair this as it concerns the pipes. While I used a licenced plumber whose work was overseen by a licensed contractor we still had toilet paper flowing into the back yard during the first big storm after the supposed repair. In our case, we discovered there was a reason the previous owner had diverted the downspout; the drain was filled with building material, etc. My advice then is to use a trustworthy plumber and make sure he adequately tests the drain and guarantees the repair.
After living in our house for several years, we, too, discovered that our downspout had been directly into a neighboring property by the previous owner. Our roofer discovered this. A plumber repaired this, reconnecting the downspout into the sewer line and also putting proper drainage in the back garden. While a roofer should have noticed this (and probably the inspector), a plumber must repair this as it concerns the pipes. While I used a licenced plumber whose work was overseen by a licensed contractor we still had toilet paper flowing into the back yard during the first big storm after the supposed repair. In our case, we discovered there was a reason the previous owner had diverted the downspout; the drain was filled with building material, etc. My advice then is to use a trustworthy plumber and make sure he adequately tests the drain and guarantees the repair.
Thanks, I had no idea! If it’s NYC law for it to go into the storm sewer, then why didn’t the inspector even mention the flipper seller had done something illegally by capping off the pipe to the storm sewer? We’d hired Coull Engineering for the inspection; we thought that’s what they were, engineers.
There is a zero runoff law in NYC. All your runoff should be going into you storm sewer.
technically the drain should go directly into the storm sewer. You can’t direct your downspout into someone elses yard. You should have hired an architect or engineer who would have told you this. However, the roofer should have known what to do. I would call the roofer or hire a new gutter company.