FOLLOWUP! In July 2012- I had sewer gas leaking into my bedroom, bathroom, and then up to the upstairs level of the house for five months. It was awful. I have an 18 inch crawlspace and a raised floor. Under the house is dirt and the pipes. I had FOUR plumbers and TWO handymen check it out. They found NOTHING! They were too big to fit around the pipes!!! We had put in a new toilet, and I had that pulled up and put down again, just in case. but that was fine. We checked all the traps, and now keep them full of water, so they are fine. The plumbers gave me estimates of $4500 for a sewer cleanout installation in front of the house, and $6800 to repipe the bad pipes, if they found any.... I did not have the money, and they really had no plan, just guesses. Last August 2012, I luckily found a neighbor friend who was able to crawl around under the house. He was a little guy, and knew how to do plumbing and other repairs!! He found leaking and large cracks in the main drain sewer pipe at the ground level, around the back of the pipe, hidden from general view and he used epoxy to repair it. This pipe was attached to other pipes, and if it needs to be replaced it will be a difficult job. That pipe was directly below the downstairs bathroom. That reduced about 70 % of the smell and seems to be holding tight with no more leaking there. But sewer gases were still leaking from somewhere else, but not as bad, or as often. it still kept coming back about every three days.They centered in my bedroom, and seemed to come out of the floor. Oddly, from the beginning, the gases only happened around 1am until 5am, then stopped all day long, so no one could smell them, unless they stayed all night. From the first repair, the gasses only occurred about every three days or so, and not as severe, but still stinky. My friend came back into town in November, and went back under the house, and found stress marks on the larger pipe that attached to the MAIN drain sewer pipe, and ran towards the front of the house. This pipe traveled directly under my BED, and the cracks were basically under my pillow area. (What LUCK!) He had to replace that whole pipe, and to get it inside we opened the ground vents and slid it through, and the old pipe out. After he replaced that and all the fittings, the gases were gone! THANK YOU GOD!!! It cost me $800 just to investigate all this, and get nothing for the repairing of it from that! Plumbers were just ready to get paid, with no idea what was actually wrong!!! My friend only charged me $550 plus parts for this! I suffered through it for five months, and hope the sewer gases didn't harm me in any way! I sure appreciate the clean smell now!!! By the way, it was an acrid stinky burning smell. It did NOT smell like METHANE, or anything described as general sewage smells. It was just hard to breathe it, and would cause eyes, throat and nose to burn. I had a runny nose right up to the day the last pipe was replaced, and it all stopped. GOOD LUCK TO ANYONE STILL HAVING THIS PROBLEM. I learned far more about plumbing than I ever thought I would need to know!

Can I get in on this conversation with a question? I have something similar in my 22 year old house. It is three stories. We do not have city sewer. We sometimes have a sewer gas odor that comes up the vents in two bathrooms only. They are exactly on top of each other. We have had a plumber out to the house three separate times. At first he said make sure to keep traps wet. We did that, smell sometimes comes back. He came out again, same thing and checked everything. Last time he said that all fixtures go into one large vent pipe on roof. Husband got up there and sure enough only one for 4.5 baths, washer, etc. The smell is only in these two bath areas. There is one bath below these two exactly as well. He said tub downstairs is not used much and trap could be dry. He extended the vent pipe up several feet in the air. He said sometimes when weather system moves in, it can hold gases down. We have absolutely no idea what this could be. It only happens every couple of weeks, but when it does, it smells so bad. We have also smelled this outside once or twice and it was so bad, I was so embarrassed. We were gone one week and our friends walked by the house to make sure everything was okay. They said they thought something BIG had died there and they actually walked around the back of the house but could not find anything. Please any thoughts. Desperate in NC

I think it may be possible to divert the water coming down the gabled roof plane before it hits the flat section. Is there any where to put a collector box and downspout on either edge of the flat portion? Be aware that what I'm thinking of could only be executed in metal in my area. If you're in a less frost-prone locale, then it may not involve replacing the gable shingles with metal. As for the drainage in the courtyard, you may have to dig in a box drain around the perimeter, or at least on the low side in front of the patio doors. The gravel roof problem falls in the domain of those professionals who do hot-mopped asphalt roofs. Casey

This looks like someone's brilliant, but bad idea. Someone is possibly trying to kill two birds with one stone by using downspout water to water the flower box, or they're trying to drain the flower box through the downspout tail. In doing so they've put a box right up against a wood fence so the fence won't dry out quickly and will rot away sooner. Why is the box necessary? There is dirt already at the edge of the walk. Plant directly in it. The gutter tail is buried shallowly. Please show where water empties out of it. If it has to come back up to the surface in order to empty, that's pretty much an eventual guaranteed clog. I would extend the downspout to a normal length (to about 12" above grade.) Attach a gutter tail, above grade, that extends about 3' or 4' -- beyond the stoop. At the end, possibly direct the water onto the walk with angle attached to the tail, whereas the walk is acting as a splash block. If not doing this way, you'd need a splash block at the end of the tail. (If this creates other problems, share information about them. We can only see a limited amount of information from these pictures.) Creating proper drainage is of the highest priority. Pretty flowers is secondary and comes after drainage is corrected.