Thread: Bio Hazard

Curious about how you may report situations regarding sewage. Went into a place today and the basement toilet backed up. However, the occupants just left it alone for several months. The smell was amazing. I put in the report as a bio hazard. Any thoughts?

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Originally Posted by mathew stouffer

Curious about how you may report situations regarding sewage. Went into a place today and the basement toilet backed up. However, the occupants just left it alone for several months. The smell was amazing. I put in the report as a bio hazard. Any thoughts?

Inform the city, and the public health department for that county. That is what I do when some one lets it get way to bad like that, and do not want to properly clean it up.

We face biohazards everyday in my opinion. Inspected a home on Monday with a plastic 40 gallon drum cut in half in the basement floor being used as a sewage ejector pump. It had a plywood lid and not vented. No check valves; nothing!

A few of the cities out here will go through the home for code inspections, and they will block the sale of the home till all violations are upgraded.

I recently did a job where a boyfriend of the home owner thought it would boost the valve of the home to install a basement bathroom and frame off a bedroom in the basement. He figured he was "handy" and did all the plumbing himself and all the other modifications. In his words "Those plumbers, carpenters, etc. are just inflating the price to make heir wallets thicker". Well since there was only one way in and out the bedroom could not stay, had to be unframed. The bathroom had no proper venting for the drains so out came the tile walls and the tiled floor. Electrical was a mess and had to be brought up to code. And since he made these modifications everything that was grandfathered in when she bought the house had to be brought up to code.

Lets just say she learned the reason everyone quoted her the prices they did. She told me to fix all the code violations alone that her now ex-boyfriend did cost her 8 times as much as it would if she hired a pro in the first place.

Its the same as I did an inspection last week. The property was rural and of course on a well.

The licenced well technician had been in prior to my inspection and rated the well to be producing 5 gallons per minute more than adequate for mortgage purposes.

When I inspected the property I noted a 36 inch well casing with a concrete lid and removal access hatch which would allow rain water entry. Upon removal of the lid, the bored section of the well pit was maybe 10 feet deep with the drilled well top only inches above the pit floor and not capped!

So .. the realtor didn't know about it, the licenceed well tech didn't check it, and the homeowner didn't disclose it, so I am glad I looked and brought it to the attention of my client. Talk about bio hazards, the primary need for life - water- and no one checks the state of the well!? Other than a bacteria, fecal coliform test, and nitrogen levels required most agents who draw the sample take it at the kitchen sink with the filtration system active, UV light, and water softener.....?! They can't seem to get it through their heads that we need to know whether the well is safe and the water pure. You wouldn't believe the disinfomation.