post-sewage lessons, & a question about basements/mortar
The city sewer main broke in front of my house last Friday, spilling a truly terrifying amount of sewage into my basement and up into the ground floor through the drains. I want to share what I learned and also ask a couple of questions:
Things learned: 1. You can add a clause in your insurance to protect you against sewer backups, and it’s cheap. (We had done that, by a stroke of luck.) 2. The DEP workers told us that this is likely to happen with increasing frequency as the climate gets worse and the budget shrinks. Look out. 3. In case it happens to you, you might want to have sandbags on hand, because emergency response time is totally inadequate to the scale of the problem. If you want gory details, let me know. Questions:
1. The sewage punched holes in the mortar between the stones in my basement. Do I need to hire a structural engineer, or can I just turn to a good mason? Or a general contractor? 2. If anybody has stray bits of advice about getting a fair deal with a massive insurance claim I’d love to hear it. I’m reading the archives and will appreciate any additions or stray thoughts. Thanks!
brokedown
in Foundation 13 years and 7 months ago
8
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8 replies
brokedown | 13 years and 7 months ago
Oh, you’re right, Arkady, the sandbags aren’t heavy enough to really contain the waste or whatever. In our case, the quantity of stuff that spewed out when the sewer line broke was really indescribable; it seemed infinite. Our wet-vac and sump pump seemed laughably small, and the sandbags were like a finger in a dike. But they did enable us to divert the flow a little. If you put sandbags in front of your doors, you can protect the parts of your house that need the protection most while you keep calling emergency services. That’s your only hope in a case like this. Once DEP came to deal with our collapsed sewer line, they diverted the sewage and started pumping with a giant pump. Only then did the sewage level stopped rising in our basement– but before that, it was like a horror movie. There was nothing we could do. I don’t know anything about the situation on Berkeley Pl, but there were no visible symptoms of this problem in our case. The workers at DEP told us that the sewer line just decayed to the point that any little disruption– they mentioned the possibility that a heavy truck ran over the street at just the wrong angle– could lead to a major collapse. They also said that all of the new construction all over Bklyn has put an intolerable burden on the infrastructure. I’m looking at Atlantic Yards in a whole new way: think of all of those people who will have to poop somewhere….
Arkady | 13 years and 7 months ago
What do the sandbags do? Keep the lead plugs in the drains? I wouldn’t think they’re heavy enough. I just looked at the work on Berkeley because my block may need the same work – the symptom there & here was a sinkhole in the roadway. The waste pipe is 12 or 15 feet down below street level so there’s a pretty steep pitch from the house waste line to the sewer – that’s a lot of hydrostatic pressure coming back the other way.
brokedown | 13 years and 7 months ago
We bought 6 in the moment of crisis but plan to have twice that on hand for the future. The thing is, you want to cover up every place where water could come up/out, and block every door that seems especially important. So, maybe.. 1 sandbag over each exterior drain; 1 over each interior drain; a couple in front of the front/back door, plus 2-3 in front of each interior door off of the hallway. That adds up to maybe 12 or so.
gowanusgus | 13 years and 7 months ago
how many sandbags did you end up getting?
brokedown | 13 years and 7 months ago
No, we’re in Fort Greene, on Willoughby Ave between DeKalb & Lafayette. I’m told that the sewage filled the basement of PS 20, too, and DEP is coming back next week to open up the street and do a more permanent fix on the sewer line.
kteiro | 13 years and 7 months ago
Where do you live, by the way? I noticed that Berkeley Place between 7th & 8th in the North Slope has been shut down for several days, with some major digging going on in the street. Is that your block?
kteiro | 13 years and 7 months ago
Where do you live, by the way? I noticed that Berkeley Place between 7th & 8th in the North Slope has been shut down for several days, with some major digging going on in the street. Is that your block?
brokedown | 13 years and 7 months ago
Thanks for reposting this, and thanks in advance for any advice! Also, an update + a query for more specific advice about fighting for insurance coverage: I spoke with the adjuster yesterday, and he indicated that the carrier is only covering the claim for the damage to the cellar, not to the ground floor (English basement), because the drains that backed up there are outside of the foundation of the house. (The french drain in our vestibule was spewing sewage like a fountain, so we were about 3 inches deep in our hallway even though we were vacuuming it up with a wet-vac.) This distinction doesn’t make sense to me, because our policy says that we’re covered for back-up of “sewers and drains”. Nowhere in the policy does it say that the only drains that are covered are those within the foundation. I’m hoping that we can dispute this with the carrier directly, but I realize that we may need to get a public claims adjuster involved at some point. I think we might also have to seek reimbursement from the city for anything that the insurance doesn’t cover. Argh.