Foundation versus pipes which needs to be fixed first?

John:  As far as foundation versus the pipes which needs to be fixed first? How do you approach that?

Roger: I work with some great foundation companies and Williamson Foundation in Rockwall is actually fantastic. I love them because they’ve got a lifetime guarantee. But I’ve talked to Roger (owner of Williamson Foundation) and we both agree you should always get the foundation fixed first because you don’t want them to come in and cause problems and if you get the plumbing fixed first and they come in to move the house around it, it creates a leak now you’re doing this again. Get the foundation fixed first then let the plumber come in and do what they do and things will be good for you

John: OK and we’re speaking with Roger Wakefield the owner, operator, founder of Texas Green Plumbing. Texasgreenplumbing.com is a easy to remember website, the phone number 972-442-4101 and you’re listening to ask the experts radio show, I’m John Wolf on talk radio 1190.

John: And Roger we’ve been talking about the sewage situation as you see the water situation as far as leaks, tell us a little bit about what sort of situations is attached to finding sewage leaks.

Roger: Sewage leaks are a lot different- you’re not going to pressurize the system so they’re not going to make the noise. So what we have to do on the sewer leak is, there has to be a two way clean out install; so if there’s not one that’s one of the first things that will do.

What we do then is we start literally pushing test balls and hoses up into the sewer system and blocking off different areas and then retesting the system over and over and over again. It’s a long process, it can take as much as a day, it can take two or three days. We’ve actually run into one that had so many lines going in so many different directions and they’re so far away and so many offsets it’s hard to push a little two inch balloon with a rubber hose you know 50 feet down the line.

Some of them you have to go in and make some other repairs and then plug them off and test from underneath or inside. One house that we’re working on right now actually we’ve already fixed one leak then we found one, two, two more that need to be fixed before we can get to another area just to isolate it. So, literally what you’re doing to find them you push test balls in, you fill it up you see if it leaks or not; if it leaks you either push it in or pull it out a little bit more you’re trying to isolate an area and literally you’re trying to look under a house to where you can’t even see and we use cameras, we use test balls, we use water hoses, we use long hoses. I’ve got test balls that have 30, 40, 50 and 70 feet. So we’re really set up we’re going to find them.

John: Well my neighbor had a situation one time where the pipe underneath the house leaving the house had gotten vines the roots had grown into it, is there any way that if you found a situation like that is that common- first of all that if you had a situation like that what would you tell them as far as trying to prevent that from happening a second time because I know the roots will seek water.

Roger: The roots are always going to and once they’ve been there once there’s a way to get back in. So it’s not like you can just run it with a sewer machine and cut the roots out and say OK we’re done.  The roots are going to grow and they’re going to come back out.

I literally, on a house in Mesquite one day, pulled a section of the roots out the guy had to clean out at the end of the house which is a great thing to have because and you can’t run a sewer machine all the way through. It apparently the top got cut off with a lawn mower, it had a tree wrapped round it and the tree literally grew roots down and by the time I pulled it out and I mean we had to use a ratchet strap in order to get it out but what we ended up pulling out was a section a root three inches round about six feet long that had gone in and started stopping up his tub and toilet.

John : I’ve just got to say that if you’re listening to this on the radio in your car, in your house wherever you’re not seeing Roger Wakefield doing all the hand gestures but he’s videotaping this and you can see it on his website or on your Facebook site if you’d like to give a little information about that because it really does add a lot as you’re demonstrating where these poor people they can’t see what I’m seeing.

Roger: If you like what you’re hearing my name is Roger Wakefield, I’m on Facebook, we have Texas green Plumbing Page on Facebook, we’ve got the Texas Green Plumbing page YouTube channel and we do a lot of things.