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Post by roverpup on May 19, 2021 4:23:45 GMT
Had a heck of a frustrating day all because I wanted to plant a hydrangea bush in my front yard.
I was trying to be cautious and decided to call the "locate" service for utilities in Ontario, to make sure my digging of the hole for the bush wouldn't snag any buried service lines.
I tried first to use their "online" version and it was IMPOSSIBLE to use! My first clue that this was going to be difficult was that I couldn't just type my phone number into the provided box because it only worked if you entered the number BACKWARDS! Then, they wanted details that I think only a professional surveyor would know about. I finally just gave up and decided to call them on the phone.
Big mistake! I was on hold for 2 HOURS before I finally spoke to someone.
I have to admit that the woman who answered the phone was very pleasant and patient with my stupid questions but oh boy I was so frustrated!
I only had to dig a 12 inch deep hole! Problem was that there is the possibility that there might be a gas line somewhere near the area I want to dig in, so I certainly didn't want to hit it.
Naively I thought I would just call and they'd check while I was on the line and then magically I would get the go-ahead and dig my hole in the afternoon.
Turns out it will be at least 5 days before i get the go ahead - actually 6 because next Monday is a holiday and weekends don't count, so what I thought would be a one day delay will turn out to be almost a week!
I have to wait until 4 utility companies give me the OK. One of them already emailed me to say it was OK by them, so that leaves 3 more to go.
This hydrangea better be one beautiful bush!
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Post by queenzod on May 19, 2021 4:39:27 GMT
Ah, beaurocracies! It’s good that you called, though, frustrating as it is.
A friend of mine was back hoeing up in the rural mountains once, hit a county water line and cut off the water to an entire mountain town! He was so upset and it took them 3 days to fix it. So be glad it’s not a major project, lol.
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Post by mllemass on May 19, 2021 11:17:01 GMT
Over the past few years, we’ve had our basement flooded several times after a big rainstorm. Each time, we’ve paid a professional company to come and fix the problem, and they do - until the next big rainstorm. Last August, after the worst flooding yet, we discovered that the city had a program in place to pay for the repairs of the pipe systems in people’s homes. We found out that we qualified, and within a couple weeks, the job was completed.
But before they could seal up the hole they dug in our basement, the city had to come and inspect the work. They brought in a special camera that they put into the pipes to video what’s happening down there. A few days later, a guy from the city’s water department called to tell me that the video showed a broken pipe where our pipes meet the city’s pipes, under the street. But before the city could do the repairs, we had to get the pipes on our property replaced, first. Aahhh! We had already done that! The guy on the phone didn’t believe me and said that if it’s true, there would be a report from the city’s inspector. So he looked for it, and found it - thank goodness.
It wasn’t considered “urgent”, though. I was in a constant state of panic whenever it rained. When I called to find out when the work would be done, they didn’t know because they had to do “urgent” work first. And since we had running water, it wasn’t urgent for us. While we waited, a bunch of people showed up one day to spray paint coloured lines all over our lawn and the street in front of our house. My father told me that the different colours represented different services - like blue for water. There were also lines painted in yellow, green and pink, and I have no idea what they mean.
It was October when they finally did the work, leaving a big piece of our lawn without grass and a big patched-up hole in the street. Somehow, little by little, they came and finished the long drawn-out job. The final step was a snowy day in February when they came and filled in the big sink hole that appeared once the dirt had settle on our lawn, and they spread grass seeds over it - in February! It looks terrible, and the grass is patchy and has bald spots, but that’s only visible from my bedroom window upstairs. And it’s finally over.
We haven’t had another big rainstorm happen again to know if the repairs really fixed the problem. It makes me angry to think that the broken pipes on the city’s side were the reason for the repeated flooding all along!
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Post by roverpup on May 19, 2021 12:10:09 GMT
Flooded basements are the worse! Luckily our house is built on a sand dunes so we've never had a problem with flooding. But my sister! Every house she's lived in has been built on clay and she has had her basements flood. Sump pumps, contractors, city inspectors! You name it she and her husband have dealt with it in 3 different homes! One time they had complete reconstruction of the basement to make sure it couldn't flood (and did a beautiful reno job in the interior as well) and it STILL flooded and ruined everything (the worse was that they lost years of treasured family photos!).
In their current home, after that basement flooded (and damaged some of her husband's prized guitars) they got the essential work done but moved everything valuable out and into a vacant bedroom and didn't even bother to finish the interior walls.
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Post by mllemass on May 19, 2021 15:25:19 GMT
The only reason last August’s flooding got any attention was because so many people posted photos of flooded basements on twitter, and they also tagged their local politicians. The city had no choice but to respond and offer to pay for repairs. And luckily, the city wasn’t just going to take our word for it, and they sent their own inspectors to check that the work was actually done before reimbursing us the nearly $2000 it cost. It was only then that they found the damaged pipes that had been there for years. It makes me so angry that all those calls I made to city hall over the past 15 years that we’ve lived here were ignored. We did everything they told us to do, and they did nothing.
One of the plumbing contractors who worked on our house said that he’d done work in the past in every house on our street. He said that when our street was built in the late 1950s, it wasn’t part of the same water and sewage system as the rest of the city. I guess they just added a few pipes to join them, and left it like that. There was never any upkeep because the city never acknowledged that those pipes were there.
Fortunately, we learned long ago not to keep things of value or anything that can be damaged by water near the basement floor. That means all our basement storage is on shelves and in plastic bins. So we’ve never really lost any property because of the flooding.
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