We live in North Toronto and had, for the first time since purchasing the home over 4 years ago, sewer gas and bad odours coming up through our main drain in the basement.
We contacted this company for emergency service on a Sunday. They were very timely and had arrived at the house within an 2 hours of our call. Our house had a complete basement renovation, including being dug down and the entire basement plumbing was new. My suspicion was not that we had a broken drain pipe, but rather a plugged vent that was preventing the proper flow of drain water. The contractor was offended and condescending when I suggested that the problem was minor. He proceeded to tell me the entire basement plumbing was not to code and would have to be ripped up, as well as additional work in the front yard. His quote was $3816.00 for the "repair".
I then contacted the City of Toronto via www.toronto.ca and they dispatched someone from the wastewater and sewer division who arrived at my home in less than an hour. He was on-site for about 1 hour and deduced that there were no plumbing issues everything was fine. He suggested the sewer smell was caused by a back-up that left gunk in my weeping tiles that surround the house that also drain into the main drain and that the odour was coming from them. We cleaned out the main drain with a hose and he recommended a $15 "backflow valve" from Home Depot to prevent gases from coming up through the main drain. Everything is functioning fine.
