All Forum Posts by: Mike Palmer

Thank you for the input Mindy. It is a city line and it has been snaked. It was actually snaked multiple times and that would not fix it, so they jetted it and that seemed to do the job (for the time). It has now been a little over a year and similar symptoms are beginning to reappear...

There has been some gurgling at the downstairs kitchen sink, but it is random. I will peek in the vent pipes just in case, but I have a feeling that is not it.

It is basically an up/down duplex. No problems that I know of upstairs. Downstairs has 1 bath and a kitchen, and a floor drain in the utility room that I added after the last fiasco just over a year ago. There is no floors below this one. The bathtub is near the downstairs toilet and does not drain well either, but I haven't thought to watch that while things are going upstairs. I will have them keep an eye on that and see if any bubbles or anything comes up there, but to my knowledge it is not.

Does this sound like something I need to rush to figure out? It has been several months in the making already, so I assume I can wait until I happen to be up there next (the property is quite a distance from me) and check the vents at that time and go from there?

I did pull the hair from the tub and it helped some but not much. They then tried Draino and said it is way better. Still didn't seem like it was totally free flowing to me.

This problem originally began with at the kitchen sink. They were hearing gurgling noises at first, then it starting backing up into the kitchen sink (when they were not using the sink). Then when the upstairs would do laundry, or when the water softener would run, water would back up into the downstairs kitchen sink. After I paid big $ to supposedly fix that, it seems the toilet has been the next area where the problem manifests, but I believe it stems from the same problem.

I think I may go the city route first just because they will do it for free. If I can arrange to be there perhaps I can sweet talk them into poking into my line a bit and see what they see from that side while they are there.

Ouch. I am already into this over $2k, and I fear they didn't actually fix anything and I got screwed and am likely just out that money.

I did call the city and they will inspect their side of the line (up to the point it breaks off to my house) for free, but I have not heard of my neighbors having any problems so I don't know if this would do anything. Is this worth doing before I pay to inspect my side of it?

And if they snake it first, wouldn't that clear the blockage and the camera may not find the problem, or are you saying you want the blockage cleared first so they can see what is causing the blockage to begin with?

The other thing that baffles me is that the tub was draining really slow and it seemed to back up as soon as you turn it on, so I am thinking the block was very close to the tub. Last time (when all the major work was done), it was the kitchen sink backing up. Now it seems the toilet is the weak link. But in each case it seemed like the problem was right there near whatever drain was having problems.

I wondered if that might be where this is going.

I had major work done just over a year ago, and I had a feeling they did not fix the actual problem.

What kind of issues are you thinking? Would snaking/jetting solve them for a year or so and then they could come back, or what would make the issue seem to come and go?

Yes, I figure I will have to depreciate it (if it needs full replacement), but he is saying that I cannot do that either because I live under the roof. That is really my question is whether I can write off any of the costs at all on my taxes. I just changed to this tax guy 2 years ago, and he has saved me tons more money than my last guy, but I would think there has got to be some way to get some tax advantage of the roof, even though I live under it and the other unit is below me.

On the deposit those tenants are gone and I did already have to pay it. Since they took care of things while I was there and cleaned fairly well I felt they deserved it back, and I didn't want to screw them just because I was getting screwed. Since I didn't want to come out of pocket for it, I just had them not pay the last month's (or few weeks or whatever it was) rent. But I can easily change that to show they paid me rent and I had to pay them back the deposit. However, my tax guy is saying that there again is not tax situation where this can be used to offset income or be counted as an expense...

Thank you for all the input. I should add that the lines have been snaked (professionally) SEVERAL times, although the last time was just over a year ago. That didn't seem to solve the problem and after multiple snakings I had the drain line jetted. That seemed to take care of it for the time, but now we are seeing this crop up again. Is it just going to need snaked annually as routine maintenance, or is there something else going on?

Hello:

I have 2 situations that I have not been able to find answers to (at least to my satisfaction that they are correct). One is very rare and crazy, but the other I am sure has happened to someone out there. Here goes:

- I live in the upstairs unit of a duplex. The roof is in poor shape and has started leaking, and will need repairs if not full replacement. My tax guy says that I cannot deduct the expense of the new roof. Since the roof covers both units wouldn't I be able to at least write off 1/2 of the cost? I will eventually move out and rent both units. Would I at least then be able to retroactively deduct this cost at that point?

- Now the really crazy situation. I bought this same property as a short sale. The contract stated that the seller would transfer the current tenants deposit and pro-rated rents at closing. Well, the seller is a low-life scum bag and had no intention of doing this. I saw this coming and warned my agent and let the selling agent know, and told them to make sure this was taken care of prior to closing. Well we get to closing and there is nothing (as I expected). In fact, the seller contacted the tenants and tried to get them to pay additional rent in advance so she could skip town with the extra rent. The tenants actually called and told me this (thankfully), and I told them to only pay her the pro-rated portion of the rent before I took ownership. This salvaged half the rent, but the seller says the tenants broke a bunch of rules and that she verbally told them they would not be getting a deposit back. I say this is not for her to decide any more because she will not be the landlord when they move out and that she should have charged them the late fees and other fines at the time they happened. Anyway, since I assume the contract I was then liable to pay the tenants back the deposit, whether I received it or not. I assumed I could write off the loss of deposit, but my tax guy is saying this is just uncollected income and that it is not a direct loss that can be written off. I hear of banks, businesses and hospitals all the time that write off uncollected income as bad debt. Am I just screwed here or should I at least be able to get a tax benefit for not receiving the deposit per the contract?

I have a unit that has experienced way too many plumbing issues. Now it seems I have a toilet that has some issues. For one it doesn't seem to flush very well. The tenants have not complained, but I have noticed that it flushes very slow, has no 'power' to the flush, and you sometimes need to flush multiple times to get it to go down if there is anything but liquid in it.

Well then the other day the tenant sends me some pictures of the toilet filling up with soap bubbles. It seems that when the tenants upstairs take a bubble bath, that bubbles come up into the toilet bowl and up around the bolts and around/through the floor area. I have tried to attach pictures, but the bubbles basically come up from under the floor and up through the toilet. The bubbles on the floor came up through the floor (they did not overflow from the bowl onto the floor).

Does this indicate that the toilet is not installed properly? Or that the toilet needs replaced? Or is there a problem farther down the line? The bathtub in this bathroom was recently plugged but some draino took care of that. Apparently this soap bubble issue happened previously about 4-6 months ago, but they asked the upstairs tenants and found out they had taken a bubble bath and so they didn't worry about it until they saw it happen again this time. What would make the soap bubbles from upstairs come up through the toilet???

When I called them they quoted me a bit more than that, and that was supposedly the tradeshow pricing or whatever they called it that they told me was the cheapest possible price.

I noticed on their site it says prices listed were valid as of last June and that pricing can change any time. It appears prices have gone up significantly since then...