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!

To follow up on my adventure with the sewer: I found that the sewer had backed up again after the last visit from the plumber. I called Mr Rooter, a local franchise of a national company that does free Television inspections of the sewer line. The other plumber wanted $300 to bring in a camera inspector. I watched the video and it was so murky we couldn't see any break. They decided to jet it out with water. The hose got stuck, they determined in a break in the line. They dug, way down, almost 7 feet. They found not a break but a huge gap of 2 feet or more. And the cast iron line going into the house was rotted out. So, mystery solved: rain water pouring off the roof (I have no gutters in front) was pouring down into this corner of the house, pushing sand and mud into the pipe and water. Mr Rooter provides a "trenchless" pipe liner, an innovation from Europe that involves resin epoxy and a plastic sleeve. It was quite an operation, taking all day and well into the night. They will have spent 2 and a half days on the project before it is done. Good news is I will have a virtually new pipe inside the old one with no damage to the yard (except where they had to dig). They will install a new clean out, a back flow valve, and all this for a mere ... BOHIC (bend over here it comes) $6,000. It is guaranteed for 50 years. I hope to never have to a sewer problem again, not in this house anyway. Here is a link that might be useful: Mr. Rooter

only thing i can say is a fair price would be the average of teh 3-4 quoted prices you get form folks in your area. short notice work such as this will drive the price up.

you may not know but this pipe lining ws started over in europe the last 3 decades maybe 4? their infrustucture is way older than ours. where I am, it is all slab homes (no basements) mostly 1970's and 80ty's were made of cast iron. PVC started to make it way into the mainstream after that. These pipes are rotting away! when I say rotting I mean the base is gone.fractures are 1/2 inch and wider that are all over the place.sides,bottom, top, in lentghs that are in feet. Now you also have water lines in there.where? who knows. pipe bursting is not good because at every place a 2" or 4" pipe comes into the main line you have to dig up a section of floor to have a repair done et every interval. short of digging up the home and it had been done, pipe lining is the only real way to avoid a total rehab of the home. the co's that do this have a limited 50 year warranty on materials. it seals every joint,fracture all drains coming into the line and thats where they call reinstateting comes in. they have to open up all drains that where covered over by the material. so if europe started this,30 or 40 years ago and did all their streets (no digging up the streets all over europe) and I have not read anything bad happening I would not have any fears. like anything else,price and convience,where I am located sarasota fl this is the only way to fly! I am talking infustructure. if you had a cobblestone driveway the cost of lining would be cheaper than having someone come in to do the repair on top of the repair. also pipe pulling would in that case should be looked at too. BTW I also do this work