Drainage in rental property

handlemaster

Who is responsable for blockages in side the house and also pipes running outside from the house but on rental property.Is it landlord or tenant who pays for unblocking ?

Cuddlesworth

Landlord unless the blockage has been caused by the tenant through negligence.

handlemaster

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Landlord unless the blockage has been caused by the tenant through negligence.

Do y ou a link for this ? I dont see direction on this online.
That would only be proven after the issue was fixed by a pro. Who pays for this without liability been proven.

yankinlk

have u lived there more than a year? if its a seasonal issue, it will happen every year at the same time roughly. ofc the ll would know this.

if its something tenant put in the drain, it could be the first occurence.
tenants are known to put the oddest things down toliets.

did u try to rod it yourself?

handlemaster

yankinlk wrote: »

have u lived there more than a year? if its a seasonal issue, it will happen every year at the same time roughly. ofc the ll would know this.

if its something tenant put in the drain, it could be the first occurence.
tenants are known to put the oddest things down toliets.

did u try to rod it yourself?

I think its food been put down The sink. Loads of food pieces coming out from waste water

Mrs OBumble

Some people are clueless. Unless you spelled it out at the start, pay it yourself this time, but give them a very stern talking to about food disposal and drains, and the fact that next time they will be liable.

shruikan2553

The landlord would pay for it to be fixed and find out the cause. If the guy fixing says someone has been shoving food done there or something else caused by the tenant then the tenant should pay.

debabyjesus

yankinlk wrote: »

tenants are known to put the oddest things down toliets.

What an odd thing to say. What else bar the obvious do these pesky tenants put down toilets?

ronn

debabyjesus wrote: »

What an odd thing to say. What else bar the obvious do these pesky tenants put down toilets?

Pesky landlords :-) :-)

Mrs OBumble

debabyjesus wrote: »

What an odd thing to say. What else bar the obvious do these pesky tenants put down toilets?

Ahh, you've never managed property, have you.

Well just to really raise the tone: sanitary towels, tampon applicators (cardboard and plastic), nappy liners, incontinence pads, food that has not passed thru anyone's digestive tract and is too large to do so, bottle tops, cellphones, cotton buds, kitchen roll ... the list is actually endless.

yankinlk

had one fella, who went on to be a doctor... cleaned the bathroom when it was his turn with paper towels. did a bang up job, spotless clean it was... all grand untill he threw the dirty paper down the loo and could not understand why it stopped up.
he might as well put a bag a cement in.

yankinlk

food is not normally the cause. if it isnt something unusual thrown in, there could be a genuine issue with drains. need a bit of history of the property to narrow it down, sounds like u are the LL.

if its drain issue, it will be one place that causes it every time. for example a seal between sections of pipe could pop, and it can get in the way of the flow, catching paper....only takes a small thing to build up then.

if it keeps hapening, call roto rooter, get the cameras down. its not huge money to identify exactly the issue, then its dig and replace.

buy rods for the tenants. if they have to use them more then once, and its NOT something they threw in, they will call you.

murphaph

Babywipes are a favourite to throw into the toilet as well. Many people think these will break down like toilet paper but of course they don't.

handlemaster

murphaph wrote: »

Babywipes are a favourite to throw into the toilet as well. Many people think these will break down like toilet paper but of course they don't.

I ve had that one also. That cost me €200

Cuddlesworth

handlemaster wrote: »

Do y ou a link for this ? I dont see direction on this online.
That would only be proven after the issue was fixed by a pro. Who pays for this without liability been proven.

No link, just common sense and its maintenance, similar to how you are responsible for the houses plumbing. If a tenant blocks the shower drain with hair by not clearing it and the bathroom floods, they are responsible. If the shower drain blocks further down the pipes because of years of hair and lack of a grate to catch it, landlords fault.

It also depends on where the blockage is.

Most sewer lines run down either the front or back of a row of houses. Newer houses have a covered junction where each houses line connects to the main line. Older houses tend to only have accessible junctions around every 100 feet on the main line with individual houses having no direct access to the main line.

In the unlucky event of the main line backing up, in older houses the first person with a access grate up from the blockage gets the sewage backing up into their garden. That blockage could have been caused by any number of things. In most cases, that house will continually end up with the bill to unblock the line(good thing to look out for when deciding to purchase a house). In newer estates a main line block can hit 2-3 houses at once in terms of sewage problems.

Old houses with converted basements can get the sewage coming up through the toilet(if they put one there), as the access grate outside could be higher then the top level of the toilet.

If the line has been blocked from the house to the main sewer line(eg: the main line is fine, but sewage has backed up into your garden) and that blockage can be confirmed as negligence, eg:baby wipes, face wipes, nappy's etc, then the bill should be handed to the tenant. You can see this as jetting the line makes the blockage head the other direction and disperse.

In general, that's not the case though as they rarely block there. Instead they tend to block at or near a junction.

handlemaster

Thanks cuddles good reply. Checked contract states tenant is respnsible so that should ne that.

handlemaster

Maybe we should start a thread on the woes for the landlord... we always here the tenants crying into their soup and then advising others to stick it to the landlord

Cuddlesworth

handlemaster wrote: »

Maybe we should start a thread on the woes for the landlord... we always here the tenants crying into their soup and then advising others to stick it to the landlord

You could do a whole thread on blocked sewers too tbh. I have seen things. Smelly things.

leeroybrown

debabyjesus wrote: »

What an odd thing to say. What else bar the obvious do these pesky tenants put down toilets?

The best one's I've had were a man's (formerly) white vest flushed by someone when drunk. That back-flowed the entire drainage system for a large house from the roadside all the way around until the toilets wouldn't flush anymore. That was a day's work to resolve.

The other good one was someone flushing so many paper towels down a toilet that there was an eight foot long solid blockage of them from the toilet to the nearest junction box.

Aside from that most properties have an accidental blockage or a grease problem outside the kitchen occasionally.

handlemaster

I have often heard of the story of students cutting doors and rafters for firewood but never met anyone who could definitively say they knew someone who either did it or was on the receiving end.

Mrs OBumble

handlemaster wrote: »

I have often heard of the story of students cutting doors and rafters for firewood but never met anyone who could definitively say they knew someone who either did it or was on the receiving end.

I've met a housing officer who had to deal with the situation when social housing tenants (not students) did it.

"So what are when going to do when the tenants burn the doors" was one of his ways of analysing the practicality of pretty much any government policy change.

leeroybrown

handlemaster wrote: »

I have often heard of the story of students cutting doors and rafters for firewood but never met anyone who could definitively say they knew someone who either did it or was on the receiving end.

Slightly off topic but...

I know of one student house where they burned all the furniture then told their parents that they didn't know why the landlord had retained their full deposit. Needless to say some detailed explanation later from the letting agent the parents were more than happy to back down and hope the Gardaí weren't involved.

I've had former flatmates burn a living room table when but in fairness to them they accidentally smashed it when drunk and replaced it from their own pockets shortly afterwards.

My favourite though is an incident in a student accommodation block years ago where a "Shawshank Redemption" like moment where one discovered some loose mortar in the block work resulted in the occupants demolishing an adjoining wall between two apartments in order to make the house party bigger. I bull**** you not. The cost of that ran to almost €20,000.