I've seen plumbers do such for no reason I can think of unless it's for job security down the road. I seriously doubt it would have cost two hundred extra when the trencher was already sitting there. The no hub couplers plus extra labor messing with them cost more than another twenty feet of line.

home depot buckets says it all!!

My son had 4 sewer line clogs withing the first 18 months of moving into a new home. Camera revealed damaged line. When they dug it up one intire joint looked to have been hit a dozen times with an ax then run over with an automobile. It's inexplicable why that joint was buried. Things like that not only call plumbers into question, what are inspectors supposed look for?

I saw a backhoe digging up yards of sand from behind the storefront office next to ours. Turns out a toilet in a recent reno in the building was draining into the sand and hooked up to exactly nothing.

Hooked upto exactly nothing IS worse than our lousy chopped up buckets :)

It is because of this type stuff that I say plumbers chase cars and lick themselves.

Look on the bright side that at least the drain lines were hooked up. I discovered on that the drain lines from my kitchen and laundry were not even connected to the main sewer line. The previous owners or one of their contractors just stopped the line before even connecting to the main line. The lines were draining into the ground and seeping into a nearby abandoned cess pit. You never know what you'll find with old houses...

Wow ... those makes me grateful for root-infested clay pipes.

We rented an old house before I bought this old house. They were doing major road work at the end of the block for about a year. We kept having issues with the lines backing up. LL came out once and had them roto-rootered. He accused me of flushing diapers or feminine products (of course not). When the sewage began backing up into the 1st floor tub when the washer ran, I finally threatened to call the city code inspector. He got someone out with a camera - turns out the State construction crews had cut the line off because it wasn't on any maps - the sewage had been slowly draining into the empty field, then finally backed up the 200 ft to the house.

We moved not long after, but things improved until we did.

We just ripped up a couple of cracked bathroom floor tiles to discover a rotted subfloor... because the prior owners had purchased a new Toto toilet and then just set the damn thing on top of the old lead outflow pipe with not even a token attempt to seal them together.