no ‘ole

The ‘ole in the ground is gone, and we have water again. Yay!

‘ole

There’s now a huge hole in the pavement outside our house where the city have been repairing the main drain. Yay civilisation!

drain, pt2

The city came to do the drain last night. They found bad stuff, but the guy was pretty sure it was on city property. Sure enough, when they came to CCTV the drain this morning, the city pipe was cracked and badly offset. So yay!, we don’t have to pay.

Unfortunately, we do have to pay up for the basement damage. Since this happened before, we have a monstrous deductable on our insurance policy. The City of Toronto Water and Wastewater Services (whose people have been great, so far) limit claims to $500, and we may not be eligible. So we’re going to be out of pocket, but not as much as we were in Januay 2003.

drain

Ah, the joys of home ownership: our main drain has done a bad thing again. A couple of years back, it was so choked with roots from a city tree that it flooded the basement with icky stuff. This time, it just made a wet patch on the floor.

It seems that the tree (planted about 50 years ago with the house) has got into the city’s pipe, partially collapsing it. We share this outlet with our neighbours, so it’s going to be more involved getting it fixed.

There are a couple of other houses in our short stretch of street that have needed this work done. Much as I like trees in the urban environment, when they get in your drains, it’s personal.