It’s a new year, but we’re still waiting for the basement plumbing. With the city insisting that we needed to repair the sewer tap, the plumbers had to hit us up for more money (a lot more money). The alternative was to run a new sewer line under the house that then tied into the existing sewer line in the front yard instead of re-lining the existing sewer. There are several reasons we decided against that. The first is that we already got a quote for that (from another plumber) and it was still more than doing the re-lining (even with the tap repair). The second is that the tap would still be broken and could fail in the future. The third is that the existing clay sewer line in the front yard goes under the maple tree and will need regular hydro-jetting if it doesn’t gets re-lined with epoxy. Basically, even with the additional cost, this is still a better end product for (probably) less money. Unfortunately, it’s not as much less as it was originally.

We made payment and signed paperwork on the 18th, which was of course the week before Christmas. They came out and resprayed the lines in the street and easement and put up the little marker flags, but so far nothing else has been done. I appreciate the lengths that the plumbers went to to try to save us money by getting the water department to let us skip the tap repair. At the same time, they knew this was likely back in October. If they had just relented then we’d probably be done by now. Instead this project has been going on for over three months when it was originally projected at six weeks. Now there’s snow and ice on the ground, it’s undeniably going to be more difficult, and we’re still living on the second floor and contending with our water heater, freezer, and washer and dryer running on the unheated first floor. Simply put, we’re frustrated, and the huge extra bill right before Christmas didn’t help anything.

We’re resigned at this point to another winter on the second floor, supplementing our undersized radiators with electric heaters and struggling to get the temperature up to 68°. I really hope they are able to continue work if the ground freezes.