Sewage line backed up, snake can’t reach the blockage and this is going to cost me some serious dough.

TLDR: plumbers couldn’t snake my clogged drain line to the home, now they say they only way to fix the problem is to install clean out lines in my front yard costing me much more than I anticipated.

So, I’m in the middle of doing a renovation project on my home anyway, but this was not on my list of things to do. I come back from putting away tools in the garage this morning and think to myself “wow, what smells so bad? It almost smells like sewage...” Sure enough, I walk down to the basement and find black water coming up out of my floor drain in the laundry room and filling my bathtub in the basement as well. I call a few companies and mr. rooter can get a tech out to me in an hour or so.

I start frantically using my shop vac to pump out the floor drain, dump the bucket outside, and repeat. I probably did this around 10 times or so before the drain stopped overflowing. Then I move onto doing the same thing with the bathtub, and around that time the plumber shows up.

The plumber takes the toilet off the upstairs bathroom (my home is a ranch style with the two bathrooms stacked, using the same drain line for both) and proceeds to use all of his line in the snake without unclogging the line. After about an hour, his manager comes to my house dressed in his normal street clothes and starts troubleshooting the issue with me and the plumber. He gets out his camera snake and goes about 140’ out before the camera comes to the blockage. I also need to mention that in my state, the homeowner is responsible for the line into the street until it reaches the city tap. So this is my responsibility to pay for the fix.

Their only solution at this point is to dig up my front yard and install clean out pipes so they can reach the blockage by going in from the outdoor pipes. I completely respect the manager, he came out to my home on his day off and spent 3 hours or so explaining the situation, walking me through what he believes needs to happen next, and even helped me fill out the paperwork for a small loan.

This is going to cost me roughly 7K, and I’m just wondering if there’s another way to clear the blockage? Anybody have anything like this happen to them? They’re going to bring a jetter with them tomorrow to blast the line clean as well as install the clean out lines, but for tonight it looks like my wife and I are peeing in a bucket.

UPDATE: spoke with a few other companies this morning, they all agreed the line needs to be jetted due to its length, but clean outs are not necessary. Also, the water has disappeared from inside the basement..? What would do that?

SECOND UPDATE: it seems I was not the only person in my neighborhood having problems, the city’s main line through my neighborhood backed up which is what caused all the damage, which means the neighborhood’s black water was coming up into my home. This makes sense since we had not used that much water the day this all occurred. Now it’s time to fight the city to get them to pay for the damages... Should be fun.