While building a new house in an old neighborhood, I have been having trouble locating the sewer tap for my sewer line installation. The sewer line main runs through the street, and there are branches off to the sides where the house sewer lines are supposed to tap into.

First off, let me say that I wish that I had installed the sewer line earlier in the process. In my case, I could have had it installed just after basement foundation walls were up.

My plumber does not do the sewer line installation himself; he subs it out. The contractor that he hired to install the sewer line and connect it to the sewer tap spent all day trying to locate the sewer tap with no success. The charge to me grew larger and larger as he kept digging along the front of my property line.

He finally gave up, and it was left to me to contact the county and ask them what they could do to help me find the sewer tap so that I could install my sewer line. I was first told that the hole had to be left open so that the inspector could see that in fact, there was no sewer tap! It was unsafe to leave such a big hole open, so my contractor had covered it up. I thought this was an unreasonable request, so I asked to speak to a supervisor. Two supervisors later, someone agreed to send a TV Camera location crew to send a camera into the sewer system to locate the sewer tap!

When I met the sewer tap line camera operator, he told me that the sewer contractor should have dug up the sidewalk and looked for the sewer tap at the edge of the street pavement. He said that my sub should have known to do this instead of wasting my time and money by just digging along the side of the sidewalk

Lesson: Next time, I will have my sewer line installation contractor dig as close to the street as possible and dig down to the level of the main up to 6' on either side of where the sewer tap is supposed to be!

Note: (the following applies to my local jurisdiction, Dekalb County, GA)

-There may be phone and gas lines running under the sidewalk. Apparently, specialized sewer line instructors are supposed to deal with this and dig around them.

-If there is no tap, it is up to the builder to pay for the county to install a new one.

-If there is a tap, but it does not extend to the curb, then the county will extend it free of charge.

Former builder and instructor of "Save Time and Money in Home Remodeling" cont. ed. course at Emory University