This is about how important it is to tell us all the information you have, not just what you ‘think’ we need.
Recently, we had a situation where a customers home was being flooded by sewage (yuk), it was coming up out the toilet and flooding the kitchen and utility room; a really unpleasant situation, compounded by having a toddler and being pregnant!
With no access to the drains due to an extension being built over the manhole, there was no way to use a drain company to jet, these free of a blockage. We joked that with a toddler around it was probably a Buzz Lightyear, sent on an adventure…to infinity and beyond!
Now, this is not the sort of thing we normally ‘do’, but under the circumstances, if not us then who?
Thinking outside the box, we managed to remove the back of a kitchen unit and access the waste through a void, cut away the waste stack from the bathroom above, and constructed a vacuum system -that MacGyver would have been proud of- to fit the odd size pipe from the 1950’s, with a tight bend, not even drain rods would go down.
Bit by bit, we were able to suck the waste out, it was unpleasant and I’m sure we could see birds diverting away overhead from the smell, but after 2 days, we had inched our way through, you get the drift…
Over 200 litres of compacted poo and toilet roll removed later…Did we find, Buzz Lightyear?
No, we found a pair of tweezers thoroughly jammed across the pipe, having retrieved these we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves and presented our ‘prize’ to the customer and awaited their amazement….and waited….and waited…
“Oh yeah, I dropped those down the loo last month and just added a load of paper and flushed”
After several days dealing with stinking poo, we did not really see the funny side of this, but as professionals, kept our cool. Being Friday afternoon, we retired to the pub to sooth our sorrows and possibly…just possibly may have said some rude words being lied to by omission, while we struggled in poo for days to keep their home safe.
While we have now moved this forward as valid insurance claim, the result of not being honest was other works that were not covered within the limits of the policy. The policyholder has about £3000 to spend on the drains, something we could have avoided if we had know what we were dealing with on day one!
Trying to see the funny side now, but it is a little soul destroying to be there desperately trying to help, now knowing they ware watching knowing full well what we would likely find and saying nothing.
Be nice to your leak detection technician, and tell him everything at the beginning, we are there to assist you. Missing information will just slow the process and likely make it more expensive for you in the long run….lecture ends!