Home Builder Plumber Errors.
We recently had a number of drain pipe problems occurring within a two month period at our two story home. The three problems seem to be from suspicious causes.
Mike’s (our plumber) observations:
#1 With new home construction, when plumbing pipes fail to line up, some plumbers force joints to come together. This lasts for a while but as the building ages and the plastic becomes less flexible the pipe gives way. Mike has seen this happen quite a few times.
#2 New home construction typically goes out to the lowest bidder resulting, in some cases, poor workmanship. Mike started working as a plumber for new home construction when he started his career. He got to see this aspect of the business.
In our specific case, we had a number of problems that were extremely egregious to the point of being intentional:
The downstairs bathroom sewer drain goes up inside the wall behind the commode and then does a right turn over to a hallway and then up at a second 90 degree union. These pipes are hidden in walls and flooring. The second joint was hit by a hammer resulting in a crack which led to a very small leak that took years to detect. It is simply impossible for anyone to get to that right angle joint so I suspect that this may have been a worker sabotage the home because it was allegedly high end and expensive,
The next problem was in the laundry room ceiling. This room was the location of a sewer line that serviced an upstairs bathroom. The sewer pipe coming out of the cement slab was not properly positioned vertically but came up at a slight angle. The idiot plumbers, compounded the problem by trying to force a rubber joint to marry the two pipes. The pipes were so far out of being matched to vertical that the pipe leaked.
The third incompetent error was the plumber failed to apply enough glue to the mating surfaces of the two pipes as they slid together in two locations. We found out that when the plumber came to fix the second leak the movement of the pipe caused the next leak. Glue was applied to the outside of the joints but apparently rarely to the inside, which caused this. One problem was below the toilet. The second leak was from the bath/shower. This too might have been from a plumber that intended to cause the home owner leak problems in the future.
Mike also became suspicious when he went to cut the old pipes out, the plastic snapped instead of bent when the pipes were almost separated. This told him that the pipe could have been from an inferior source.
Summary: Our home builder’s plumber was allegedly incompetent or wanted the home owner to be hurt well after the house was sold.
