Plumbing Damage by Tennant

[Greg Tawes]

I have a renter that flushed towelettes/wipes down the toilet. Ended up causing a major clog that resulted in two plumbers being there all day and a $1200 bill. The act wasn't intentional, but should I still approach them about paying some of the bill or taking a portion of the bill from their security deposit? Thoughts?

[Linda Weygant]

I wouldn't charge a tenant for any of this and here's why:

Tampons are advertised as flushable and in 90% of the cases, they are fine.  Septic systems and old pipes have a tougher time with them, but unless you warned your tenants that your particular system can't handle tampons, then there is no reason that the vast majority of women wouldn't think they could.

Sanitary pads are different.  They are not advertised as flushable and most women know you shouldn't, usually because they had a plumbing system that backed up on them at some point in their life.

For the wipes, this is really tough.  The problem here is that they are all advertised as flushable, but I think exactly zero percent of them actually are.  This is a problem with the product, not the tenants.  You might think they should have known better, but there is zero reason for them to have thought that these couldn't be flushed.

In my opinion, this repair is on you.  Put a clause in your leases going forward about what can be flushed and cannot and chalk it up to a lesson learned for all involved.