-This is a transcript from Go Gaddis Radio to listen to the episode click here-> https://on.soundcloud.com/UHnCc
Welcome back to Go Gaddis Real Estate Radio, right here on AM nine 20. The answer in this segment. Is having a grinder or ejector pump in your home a problem if you have one in the basement? And what is a grinder? Ejector pump. Also, what happens if a seller fails to disclose a prior insurance claim on their home, and the underwriter considers that insurance claim to be a major big deal, like for example, a water.
My name is Cleve Gaddis. You're listening to Go Gaddis Real Estate Radio, where we help listeners go from real estate, novice to expert. So home buying can be done with the total confidence or with total confidence without all the worry that's typical with life's biggest investments. We don't want you to learn anything at closing or after.
That you should have learned before. We believe that buying a home is, um, accepting a good bit of risk because there's a lot of things that could go wrong that you might not know anything about before you close on the home or even after you sell the home. And our job is to help you think through those things.
We know as adults you can make your own decisions. We just wanna put you in a position where those decisions can be inform. We want to connect with you and it is easy. Just visit us@gogadiradio.com. That's G O G A D D I sra.com. You can ask questions, ones you would like us to answer on the air, which most people ask for us to answer them on the air, or you can have us answer them off the air.
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We are available on all podcasting platforms. Just go to go gaddi radio.com. G O G A D D I S radio.com. How would you feel if you bought a new. and sewage backed up into your basement or maybe into the bathtub in the basement, or maybe even overflowed from the toilet in the basement, uh, because the grinder, ejector pump failed.
Would you be totally mortified or even grossed out? You certainly would probably feel violated in some way if that. Rachel and John and Al Alpharetta have a question says, we're buying a home with an ejector pump in the basement. How does it work? And is this a potential future risk? And the answer is yes, it is a, uh, future potential risk.
I would say Rachel and John, and don't quote me on this number, but I would say probably 30% of the homes in metro Atlanta have some type. Uh, grinder, ejector pump in the basement. And so if you're wondering what they are, if you have a home, uh, that has a basement, as I just mentioned, and the ba the, the, the floor of the basement is lower.
Than where the sewer pipe goes out to the public sewer. So let's say for example, my home has a basement, and that basement foundation wall sticks up above the ground two feet, and it sticks below the ground. Let's just call it seven feet. and, uh, my sewer pipe runs out into the front yard about two feet underneath the ground.
So my foundation wall is above the ground two feet, and the sewer pipe runs out about two feet deep, which is four feet from the top. I said We've got nine feet, which means my basement slab is five feet below. Where the sewer line runs out to the street. Now sewer lines in metro Atlanta are gravity fed, which means whatever it is that's slowing down the pipe is gonna continue to do that because of gravity, because it's flowing downhill.
And so if you think about it, if you have a toilet or a shower or a sink or all three in a basement, and they are at a level that is lower than where the sewer pipe goes out of the house to connect to the public sewer, then you have to have a way to get the waste and the water. Up to at least the level of the sewer pipe.
I hope I. Cover that too quickly. So a grinder, ejector pump, they dig a hole in, they cut a hole in the slab of the basement, and in many cases, this is already there when the home is built. But if you were to install a bathroom in a basement after the fact and need to install a grinder, ejector pump, then they actually, you know, put a, almost a little.
Container down in the ground, and then all of the plumbing pipes from the toilet and from the uh, uh, shower or the tub and the sink flow into this canister. And inside the canister there is this grinding mechanism that takes any waste that needs to be ground up so that it can be easily pumped and grinds it up.
And then when the water in that canister reaches a certain level, a pump comes on and it pumps the waste and the. Up the pipe and into the sewer pipe and it pumps it into the sewer pipe that is ET or slightly above the level where, or the drain pipe that is et or above the level of the sewer pipe that runs out of the house.
So yes, they are potential problems because sometimes they will stop working. Is that something that I would be overly concerned with? No, and it's because there are so many of these in metro Atlanta. that if you don't have one in one home, Rachel and John, uh, that you might more than likely if you want a home on a basement, you might have a that same situation in another.
Are there times when homes are on basements and the whole sanitary sewer system is gravity fed? Yes, I would say it is unusual and it's much more common for people to have to install a grinder or an ejector pump. We. Many, many years ago had a bunch of family over and we were doing something upstairs, and I don't even remember what happened.
And we did not realize that somehow the, the, and I, I, I'm sure I'm not telling this story correctly, but somebody was using the bathroom in the basement and ultimately, uh, the grinder pump wind up becoming pl plugged. And actually in that one we have an anti backflow device and it got opened up. And long story short, uh, we had.
Food from the kitchen coming up in the bathtub, in the basement. Talk about gross food from the kitchen. Ground up food that we had put through the disposal in the kitchen coming up in the bathtub, in the basement. So Rachel and John ejector pumps grinder. Ejector pumps, no problem. Uh, I would say that if you don't have one in your current home, you probably would have one in another future home.
Uh, anyway, if you're gonna have one on the basement. . And if I were you, if you were worried about it every three to five years, maybe just have a plumber, uh, inspect the grinder pump and they can certainly replace it and be preventative. Cuz the main problem you would have would either be a break in the sewer line, a break in the, the drain line, or you would have a pump, a grinder pump that would fail to work.
This segment of the show was brought to you by the law firm of o' Kelly and Sohan. They are a full service law firm with 26 offices throughout metro. They specialize in residential real estate closings, including home purchases and refinance, closing. Corporate relocation and real estate contract review and title insurance matters.
They can be reached by calling 7 7 0 4 9 7 1 8 8 0. Again, 7 7 0 4 9 7 1 8 8 0. If you purchased a home or were in the process of purchasing a home, and you realized that an insurance claim that had been filed by the prior owner, the person you were buying the home from, affected the rate you were quoted by your insurance company, and the current owner or the seller failed to disclose.
This insurance claim to you, which the seller's disclosure requires them to disclose a, an insurance claim, how would you feel? I don't know about you, but I would be extremely disappointed. I would feel bamboozled. I would feel like. Wait a minute. I need to deal with people who are honest. Well, we've got a listener question.
This is from Oscar in Norcross Says, we went under contract on the home of our dreams only to find out that the seller had failed to disclose a huge insurance claim. How could we have avoided this? How does it affect our rate? And Oscar, the answer is in many cases you can't avoid that because there's no, now you can read the seller's disclosure and hopefully the seller would disclose.
Accurately if there had been any insurance claims. But one of the things that we do when home buyers work with. Modern Traditions Realty Group, uh, which is my real estate firm in Northeast Atlanta. Although we can help you anywhere in metro Atlanta, uh, we run what's called a CLUE report. Now, you can't actually get a clue report unless you are a homeowner or if you are an insurance underwriter.
Um, but we have a special system set up. A clue report stands for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, C L U E, comprehensive loss underwriting exchange report. And we set put up a put together a system many, many years ago that allows us to run a clue report for you to run any history of claims on the property you're looking to buy.
Over the last seven years, we have had a couple. Situations over the years where we found insurance claims that had not been disclosed. Now, in, in, in all of those cases, it was not something that affected the buyer's ability to get insurance. Now, if they failed to disclose significant leaks or significant roof problems, or you know, electrical issues, maybe that had not been fixed correctly, it could change the price of your insurance.
It could. We have had home buyers who have actually. Uh, had their insurance company tell 'em they will not insure it unless X, y, Z has been fixed. But we did have a couple of times where insurance claims for things that had been stolen. Were not disclosed by the seller, and it could be that the seller didn't think they needed to disclose it.
So I'm not sitting in judgment of the seller. But the reality is, in one case, it was a home. I wanna say it was in Lilburn and some jewelry had been stolen, and it at least allowed our home buyers to understand the claim's history of the home to make a decision as to whether or not they thought it was the place they wanted to live.
In this case, they decided absolutely. They did want to live in that home and they bought the home and they closed on the home. So Oscar. You really can't avoid it unless you work with a real estate agent, and I don't know that there are others in Metro Atlanta that have a system in place for doing this for you.
But you need to work with an agent or a team. Modern Traditions Realty Group would be my recommendation for you. Uh, someone who can run a clue report. We don't run the clue reports until you, after you go under contract, but during that due diligence period, we run a comprehensive loss underwriting exchange report.
That where the results are given directly to you. If you're looking to sell your home anytime in the next six months, we believe we can sell your home for $28,000 more than your neighbor sold their home for. If you wanna learn how and you wanna learn more, go to go gaddis radio.com. Click on sell for $28,000 more.
Put in a little information and I will reach out to you personally. In the next segment we're gonna have and we're gonna feature in our neighborhood Spotlight Champions run in Swan. ForSight County. We're gonna also answer first time home buyer questions, and we're gonna tell you about some Atlanta bands that are being considered by the BeltLine.
Stick with us. We'll be back.