Sewer lines

Typically in any city the homeowner is responsible for the line from the house to the main line and bears the financial burden if anything goes wrong. It doesn't seem like your CCR's were amended, but a "clarification" was issued to anyone who thought the sewer line was the hoa responsibility.

But I dont know, depends on what your docs say about sewer lines and lines from the house to the main line, etc

Thank you for your replies. Actually our sewer line is 35-40 years old and has been divided into three parts. The lateral line from inside the house to where it hooks up to the HOA sewer line. There are two sides of the street each with their own HOA main sewer line and they run 200 feet including through both common and individual properties to the bottom of the street where they join together in a single line that hooks up to city sewer.

The lateral lines are the responsibility of the individual property owner, i.e. is what is called specific use property. The HOA covers its own main line which is called common purpose/use property and has easements through individual properties. The line was maintained once every decade when the board got around to thinking about it and hiring a plumbing company to clean it out and repair broken lines. They last did that about six years ago. The CC&RS when rewritten and codified in 2000 included those definitions. After the recent cleaning, the board discussed changing not the CC&Rs on the sewer lines but the Policies and Procedures to say that if you had a tree in your patio, you were responsible for repairs on the line but didn't mention anything about line maintenance or cleaning. Unfortunately for the board, even if it changed the P&Ps, it wouldn't be legally binding according to two recent case law decisions at the court of appeals because it didn't amend the CC&RS. The home owners won their cases and appeals because the CC&Rs either weren't amended or were improperly amended. Changing policies and procedures isn't enough from a legal perspective. And no one knows about it and there's no minute record of it either for some reason. So how did it happen?

That's required as well as registering the sewer line changes with the city or be charged with violation of a municipal ordinance. I'm going to contact the three attorneys on recent case decisions simply to ask for more information on the briefs that they filed in these three lawsuits. The findings themselves which i read don't provide much information on that. I will also ask the same inquiries of the lawyers who represented the respective HOAs that all lost.

The CC&Rs can only legally be amended in a case like this through 2/3 of the vote after the calling of the election in writing to all HOA members a certain period of time before the election. This wasn't done. I've requested any new revised CC&RS but mostly to see if they violated their own CC&Rs by not taking it to the membership. I interviewed past and current board members on this "clarification" of the lines and none remember it nor the CC&R changes. The management employee told one board member the owner was responsible and told another board member he agreed that it was time to schedule maintenance and any repairs of the HOA portion of the line. Since those changes, the board actually authorized reimbursement on one sewer line breakage on individual owner property albeit someone who has 15 votes to use for electing board members at elections as opposed to only five. One time they made the owner pay even though the line failed within two years of being replaced during an HOA authorized maintenance and repair operation. So what's with that if it's the homeowner's responsibility?

We pay sewer fees as part of our monthly dues and we pay sewer to the city as part of our utility bill. Even though the HOA pays water through our dues, we pay electricity and sewer is paid separate from water. So we pay both the city for maintenance and repairs of the municipal line overall and we pay HOA dues for what if they've somehow rewritten the CC&Rs without taking it to a vote.

I'm interviewing other HOAs in my region to find out what their policies are. I'm setting up a meeting with everyone on our particular main HOA line. At the very least if it's our responsibility, we need to have bake sales to raise money for a new sewer line because ours is probably going to fail within a few years due to hardly any maintenance in the past 15 or so years even when it was under HOA jurisdiction. But then if the sewer line becomes a health or safety hazard issue, according to state code, it would revert to being under the control and responsibility of the HOA regardless of what's in the CC&Rs.

The way our lines run it's nearly impossible to effectively clean and maintain it piecemeal. Because in order to most effectively hydro jet it, they would have to access a clean out on another neighbor's property. Most plumbers won't replace the HOA line if it's broken unless the HOA signs off on the actual repair for liability reasons. Because apparently no one knew about these changes and there's no contention that maintenance fell under these "changes", the main sewer line has gone six years without maintenance and since about 90% of all blockages and breakages have been traced back to common trees (mine were two 50 feet eucalyptus trees in common property that the line ran in between and they were about 6 feet away from the repair portion), the plumbers told me that I could still have serious problems even with my line being cleaned out because of clogs further down the line. They scoped about 30 feet of it and found huge root obstructions and also broken sections of line on other people's property, some of the worst they'd ever seen. The plumber advised me to have the HOA board scope the line out from top to bottom. I talked to my neighbors and one of them told me he had serious problems and his plumber had also warned him to have the whole line scoped. He did go to a board member who told him it had recently been scoped when it had been about almost five years. That board member never told him that he was responsible for the line just that the board had recently had it maintained and this would have been quite a while after the so-called amendment.

Thanks for your replies!

Some developments have happened. I decided to write an HOA wide letter about the situation involving the sewer lines through our email list. I include the part where my plumbers told me to advise the HOA to have the common lines scoped from top to bottom ASAP. First of all, it only took minutes for people on the list to email me about their own concerns about problems they experienced on the same lines and others to contact me in person. Then I got a letter back from the manager saying that the board held an emergency meeting to discuss maintaining the sewer lines once annually by mechanical snaking. That certainly does sound like the HOA association is actually responsible for the common lines including where they run through individual properties if they're discussing and making maintenance discussions that they said were in response to a main line backup at the end of the year (which I found out was likely mine). The problem with mechanical snaking is that it's not nearly as effective with broken lines and there has to be broken lines to have the sheer amount of root infestation that can create clots of roots that are at least 40 feet long. Snaking is inexpensive but within six months, the roots will grow back faster and thicker worsening the problem until the broken lines are addressed.

There's no minute record of this "emergency" meeting though they promised minutes. They also promised it'd be on the agenda in January and during the meeting it was added on during the meeting when one board member asked why it wasn't on there. So no one had a chance to discuss it at that meeting either. And if it's an emergency, why then is there no date to have a plumber come out and do the maintenance?

The pipes are actually ceramic tile but they have those black rubber couplings that are then clamped. The rubber stretches over time or from conditions and it looks like it's possible the roots initially get through there. The ceramic piping eventually breaks later from all the pressure of the roots growing uncontrolled inside the pipes.

One neighbor of mine snaked the main line on his property out of sheer desperation to get his drainage back in his home and within nine months, camera scoping showed root infiltration as if it'd never been snaked. The funny thing about the camera is that they could barely even push it through the roots. I'll never forget how disgusted the plumbers were when they saw the condition of that line. They said that the damage to my lateral line and the backup was 100% because of the HOA mainline on my property getting infiltrated by eucalyptus roots from a 70 foot tree in the common area about eight feet away. But that the line had already been clogged with roots from other sources off my property. The 40 foot section of main line from the end of my lateral line downward is extremely root infested and there's broken line in at least two places close to my property but not on it. At about 50 feet down from me in the common area, apparently there's a portion of the main line that's nearly completely blocked. There's evidence of some major repair about four feet away from a 60 foot pine tree.

That's one issue that impacts maintenance is that they're many trees in the common areas in close proximity to the main line including eucalyptuses, pines, magnolias and sycamores. All have serious root issues if close to sewer lines.

Further down there's four residences among five units in one location that have all had sewer backups and line blockages caused by the condition of the main line in 2009-011. All the plumbers who served those problems saw evidence of major root infestation in the main HOA line.

There's no documentation anywhere that the main lines are anything but common lines and thus HOA owned. I don't know why they were insisting otherwise except to shift responsibility for an aging and unmaintained sewer line on individual property owners to replace piecemeal I guess. That strategy if that's what they're doing doesn't seem to be working well.

It's frustrating to have them neglect maintenance even when warned of problems by other people who had to do repairs and then having to pay out thousands of dollars to plumbers who are upset that you're paying because they think the main line's the worst maintained they've ever seen and then finding out, well they've decided to maintain them after all. Only then they don't actually schedule anything. I realize how much it's going to cost to put in new sewer line, the hardest part will involve restoring people's patios and courtyards b/c about 80% of the lines run through those areas. But the way things are going, unless action's taken, that's where we're heading.

Welcome to the forum, Victor. Please note that the posts you are replying to are several years old.