New apartment complexes were put up near his house, but the owners didn’t properly upgrade the sewer lines in time, so his yard was always getting ruined by plumbing backups.

He asked the apartment building workers to help him deal with it, but they rudely refused, so he blocked the sewer line and just used his septic system instead.

The neighbors in this story quickly discovered the problem when all the plumbing in the apartment complex started backing up and making a huge mess.

You have a terrible drainage system and you don’t want to help me, your downstream neighbor, fix it? Enjoy losing your tenants.

The area we live in has changed drastically in the last decade or so.

This would be terrible.

Almost all of our neighbors have pulled down their homes are have constructed apartment buildings. The problem is that the sewer system is quite old and is not built to handle the current volume of waste.

A company is as well in the process of constructing a new sewer system, so the old line experiences a lot of blockage.

At least it won’t impact them much.

In our home, we have a septic tank. We use the sewer system only as a drain for rain water. The compound is about halfway up a hill.

The upper boundary has a live fence but the lower side next to the road has a wall. This essentially means that when it rains, water from up the hill can flow into our compound but has no outlet.

This sounds like a mess.

The dirt road on the other side of the wall is also poorly built and pools a lot of water next to our wall.

So, to get rid of rain water, there is an underground connection from the lowest point in our compound to the sewer line, which runs parallel to the wall on the other side of the road. It’s not the most ideal setup but it has worked for decades.

Adding lots of new residents without updating the sewer is going to cause problems.

Anyway, the new constructions have overtaxed the existing system. When there’s a blockage, the backflow ends up in our yard since it’s the lowest exit.

There are about five apartment buildings upstream of our connection each with over thirty units, so the backflow is usually pretty heavy.

That’s a lot of work. And really gross.

Most of the times, we react quickly and remove the blockage, but it’s really a pain. To add on to this, the caretakers for the five apartment buildings don’t do anything to help me.

So last week, the construction cut into the existing line. However, they just filled the hole with the breach with dirt and carried on without telling anyone.

Disgusting.

I came home to a stinky flooded compound with pieces of feces floating by. I call my usual guys but they aren’t around. So, I decide it’s time for the upstream caretakers to help out.

I find three of the five chilling. I’ll be Me. They will be C1 C2 C3 (Conversation translated from native language):

Hopefully they will be helpful.

Me: Hey guys. The sewer line is blocked. I need a hand.

C1: Why you always bothering us with this? It’s your problem.

Me: It’s OUR problem. We all use this line. You need to contribute to its maintenance.

But their buildings are still impacting this guy.

C2: We’ve moved to the new system. My building doesn’t use the old one any more (this was a lie. The construction was being done in stages and it was nowhere near our street).

Me: Guys, we’re all moving to the new line when it gets here. Just help me out until we can switch.

C2: (mad at being called out) That’s not our problem. You handle it however you want. We don’t care. Deal with your own property.

I don’t blame him, I would be mad too.

This really made me mad since they had no idea how much I did for them. You want me to deal with my property however I want? Sure thing.

First of all, I found the location where the blockage was. Luckily, the crew were still there and they were super chill in helping me unblock it although I had to buy new pipe to repair the section they had broken and also ‘bought them some tea’ if you know what I mean (corruption is a cancer in my country).

I would do whatever it took to get off this system.

But I didn’t stop there. Motivated by the caretakers’ arrogance, I asked some of the guys to help me out the following day. Basically, what we did was we removed the connection between our compound and the sewer line.

Instead, we levelled the depression in the road right outside our wall to allow rain water to flow freely down-slope then we removed a brick from the bottom of the wall to give rain water an exit from our compound.

All I had to do was wait.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Yesterday afternoon, the crew working on the construction caused another blockage on the old line. Again, they didn’t tell anyone.

They only covered it up with dirt and rocks just like before. By dusk, the five apartment buildings started feeling the blockage. The people living on the ground floors, some of them my friends, start to complain.

Hey, this isn’t his problem.

Apartments are getting flooded. Sink drains are not working. Toilets are not flushing well. Showers smell and are flooded with greywater.

This evening, almost all the ground floor residents in the two closest apartment buildings are moving out. The stench in the houses is unbearable. I just laugh as I help my friends move.

They knew they were in the wrong.

The caretakers are too ashamed to ask me for help. They have no idea where the blockage could be since they have never had to fix one before. I am not about to tell anyone.

All this could have been avoided if the apartment owners would have just been nice about it, but instead, they have a huge mess to deal with.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this story.

Yeah, he tried to play nice.

Yes, very accurate.

It was a great story.

That is way worse than grey water.

It’s an interesting way to phrase it.

This could have been avoided by being a decent neighbor.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.