Thanks for taking the time to provide your thoughts on this. Much appreciated.
Complete back-ups would happen with just normal use, so I have had to have extreme minimal use to minimize these for 1.5 years and counting. So, showering is ok if I do nothing else – no laundry and nothing down any drains. (Note: I live in a old home so I was pretty darn careful even before all of this).
I did all of the work for this neighbor – consulted many plumbers, got quotes on the fix and a plan for how to maintain the line to minimize future issues. I even walked a plumber over to their home to patiently explain the risk to their home and mine. If they had addressed when notified 1) probably zero cost as they forced their contractor to address recently 2) cost way less than the small claims case if they had just paid out of pocket — about 3k for the fix/10k for small claims.
The extension of the court date was given as my neighbor is in the military. I was sort of shocked to find that this person was in the military after all of this bad behavior. My experience with individuals in the military in the past has always been fair if not perfect which seems reasonable to me.
I am still awaiting some sort of proof of the fix which I think is very unlikely. They are also claiming they don’t know my costs even though it was detailed in the paper work they were served with.
I did price out putting my own line in, but the cost starts at like 20k and sounds like it is quite hard to get approval for and that folks often run into huge time delays and increased costs.
I hope my situation is unusual…. Interesting point about the lien. Their property is impacted too. Pretty sure that is what finally motivated them — when the last back-up hit, I just waited it out instead of calling a plumber immediately. (I was pretty sure they were just using me to do all of the fixes). Sure enough, about a week or two later, I saw work being done at their home.
I would be excited if they actually fixed the problems caused by the construction, but their refusal to provide the paperwork and the pattern of evasion and lying means it is very unlikely.
