Unfiltered Story #18656

Our whole neighbourhood is old, so many of the houses here have issues with roots getting into the pipes and causing clogs. Due to heavy rain this spring, lots of budding foliage and dead branches have gotten into the drains in addition to roots. Our basement bathroom starts flooding with what looks like shower water. We tell our landlord, who suggests pouring root killer down the drains and otherwise doesn’t seem concerned. It seems to help until roughly a week later, it floods again. We get it cleaned up before the system completely backs up – this time, with raw, human sewage from the neighborhood. We’re talking literal feces and other grossness.

Our landlord, obviously loath to spend money, tries to say it’s not a big deal. After a lot of back and forth and arguing, we finally have a roto rooter dispatched, who clears out 30 ft of roots and clears the lines. However, we’re left with the fact the shower and toilet still have toxic human waste coated in them. All the estimates we are given are around $1000 and our landlord doesn’t want to pay that. She tells us to just do it ourselves.

But! A friend of my mother’s offers to do it for free. She used to own a crimescene clean up company and knows her stuff. We insist she be paid, and she agrees to an amount far below $1k.

Not only is she professionally cleaning our bathroom, she’s offering to replace the damaged linoleum (damaged before we even moved in) and install it for only a few hundred on top of her initial payment – the total of which is still under $1k.

We plan on taking her to sushi because man, we’re so, so grateful.