To ask for your advice - blocked toilet, broken soil pipe under house, autistic DD and new dog!

[Plumbingcrisis]

Have name changed for this because I need to keep the details accurate, but I'm a long term MN reader and poster.

DD is 15, autistic, getting an assistance dog who is due to move in with us permanently on Wednesday. This was already a huge deal and quite stressful all round (the dog will help her enormously in due course, but the first few weeks and months will be tricky with all of the extra demands and routine changes). But we were just about on track to be ready with doggy preparations.

However, our upstairs toilet has become blocked. Fortunately we have another downstairs, but DD isn't coping well with this as she normally avoids the downstairs loo like the plague. She's also waking me in the night to take her for a wee, scared to go downstairs on her own.

We've had the drain guy out today and the soil pipe is blocked and cannot be unblocked because it's damaged. Looks like we will have to pull up the conservatory floor, dig down, fix the pipe, get a new floor etc. I am freaking out, I've contacted the home insurance but won't hear back until tomorrow and have no idea what they're going to say. I've never even made a claim before.

I think I'm going to have to postpone the arrival of the dog, I can't see how we can stay calm and get her settled into her new home when we've got workmen in digging up the conservatory. The cats are going to freak out about the dog, and also about the work, and I'm worried about the impact on them of having both things happen at once. Even getting the dog outside to the back garden to toilet will be tricky, as the way to the garden is through the conservatory! DD isn't happy. But I don't think IABU to say we need to postpone.

My actual AIBU though is to ask - AIBU to not know how how this stuff works, and please can you offer any advice?

Will my home insurers promptly organise everything for me, and quickly?

Or are they going to tell me to get a bunch of quotes and send them in and then have delays while they fanny about deciding what/whether they're going to pay?

And if they do expect me to get quotes etc, who do I even contact to get a floor pulled up and a concrete dug out and a soil pipe fixed?

And how do I generally stay sane with all of this?! We have no family support locally. Can't just move out and stay elsewhere anyway even if we haven't got the dog yet, because we can't leave the cats. I just feel like I'm on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Really appreciate everyone's thoughts here, it's helping me get my head a bit clearer typing all of this out.

I've just spoken to Dyno Rod, they're going to come tomorrow rather than on Thursday (which was the earliest I could book online).

And of course I'll be checking with the insurance company first thing to see if they will cover it or if I'm on my own with this and need to sort everything myself.

I need to make a decision about whether we're postponing the dog's arrival or not before the end of tomorrow. It's not necessarily possible to just leave it a few days, as delivery training is booked for the end of next week. It might be a long time before we can reschedule that, and the dog would probably have to remain in training and with her foster family during that time.

Please postpone getting the dog. It sounds like you will be in disarray for some time so the fewer occupants the better!

Fair enough - I think you need to try and get a vague idea asap of how long the work will
take and roughly when they can start, and base your decision on that. If they can’t start for another couple of weeks or more the dog should be settled in and less worried by things. I’m a bit more gung ho with my dogs and they just have to fit in with my life, but I understand your situation is more complicated. Maybe chat to the fosterers and/or the organisation you’re getting the dog from and see what they think would be best.

You mentioned a dh in an earlier post. Can’t he deal with at least some of this?

Thanks, yes, I should hopefully be able to get enough information tomorrow to decide whether we need to postpone the dog arrival or not. DD is very keen not to, and willing to do what she can to help make it work. But what she can actually do from day to day varies a lot.

The dog'll be fine, she's very chill and has been here before and would probably think it all a great adventure. But our plan to have her sleep in the living room won't work if we're all traipsing down to the downstairs toilet late at night and early in the morning and disturbing her. (She's slept with DD on visits, but disturbed her sleep so badly that DD couldn't cope so we've had to come up with a new plan.) And I agree, you need your pets to fit in with your life but our cats will struggle with the dog and major works in the house at the same time. And we do have an awful lot riding on the success of this assistance dog partnership; it's been a two-year journey so far and looking like the only way that DD will successfully access an educational setting after having pretty much missed high school.

Ah of course, this is MN so we must question why the DH isn't stepping up! It's a reasonable question, though. DH has complex PTSD and suspected ADHD with very high anxiety levels, so doesn't cope well with unexpected upheaval and disruption at home. He's also a therapist, which is a demanding job, working long hours to keep us afloat since I had to go very part-time to be DD's carer. My inner feminist hates me for picking up all of the wifework and letting him off the hook most of the time, but ultimately I need him fit to work and not stressing DD out unnecessarily with his anxiety while at home.

He was actually the one at home this afternoon when the Metrorod guy came. When I got back, he was white as a sheet! He spends his working hours talking to people about their very serious problems and trauma and anxiety and depression, and he's bloody good at it. But admin scares the hell out of him, and talking to a 'proper bloke' who does a job like unblocking drains rather than talking about feelings... well, his comfort levels in that situation are NOT high. 🤣

Who has confirmed you definitely need to dig up the conservatory?
we had no end of drainage issues at home and with an old collapsed clay pipe that had collapsed they were able to like blow and rubber pipe liner through the collapsed pipe that then hardens and acts as a new pipe. Maybe this is an option?

As another parent of autistic girls, I think you might find sticking to the original plan of getting the dog might work best of all for your daughter.

In the meantime, if your daughter really needs to use a loo that is upstairs you could look to get her a camping one and empty it daily.

It's a displaced joint, likely damaged when the previous owners built the conservatory on top of the soil pipe. We had Dyno run CCTV down there back in 2018. They managed to unblock the pipe enough for us to keep using the toilet (with minimal paper going down there) but the recommendation was to excavate the pipe and get it fixed. Otherwise blockages would keep happening, until the point that it couldn't be unblocked. It seems we have reached that point now.

The Metrorod guy today reached the same conclusion, after trying for ages and failing to unblock the pipe he too sent a camera down. His water jet thingy that was supposed to clear the blockage was just squirting out into the soil through the damaged joint. And not clearing the blockage.

It's really good to hear that you found a solution that didn't involve excavation, though! I will definitely press Dyno on that tomorrow. I seem to remember them saying back in 2018 that the other option might be a whole new soil pipe, fixed to the exterior wall above the conservatory and then going down and into the ground where the main sewer is. That'd be much easier for us to all cope with than having to empty and destroy the conservatory.

I totally get the importance of it working out, I also have a 15 year old ASD DD who has only just returned to education after missing 3 years. I have 2 dogs and 2 cats, and I wouldn’t worry too much about how the cats will manage, they adapt very quickly in my experience to having a dog in the house. The dog is the one at risk of being hurt by the cats (unless it’s an Alsatian or something 😂) until they get to know each other. So maybe make sure the dog can be separated from the cats overnight or when you’re not able to directly supervise them.

Thank you, yes collecting the dog on Wednesday is her preference. I am probably overwhelmed and overthinking (I'm autistic too, in case it wasn't blindingly obvious from my excessive typing on here). It's just so critical that the first few days here go well, and that the cats cope, and that DD copes. Otherwise there will be catastrophising from DD (and probably DH) and potential issues for the cats that will be hard to deal with and fix. I don't want them to be so stressed by the presence of the dog AND tradesmen AND picking up on my own stress that they start e.g. toileting outside of litter trays.

DD has said that she might be able to cope with having the dog in her room overnight after all, if we bring the new crate/den that we've bought up to her room and she's allowed to keep the door closed at night until she is confident that the dog won't jump up onto her bed during the night. This might work OK; the dog is used to sleeping in a crate and might be fine in there even with the door shut if she knows that DD is in the same room.

Camping toilet for night-time wees might work if we can't get all of this fixed soon. It'll just have to sit inside the bath and be moved every time we need to shower, because of lack of space. 🤣

I think I've decided that, if we can't get the soil pipe sorted quite quickly, we will have to just find a way to cope without the upstairs toilet but still get the dog as scheduled. Having the conservatory dug up in, say, six weeks' time shouldn't be as stressful, because the dog will be well on her way to settling in and the cats should have acclimatised to her presence. She is fabulous with the cats, so calm, doesn't even bark. One of the cats has already learned, on sleepover visits, that THIS particular dog might actually not be dangerous. I don't want anything to mess with this progress, or the success of the programme overall.

Does that mean you've been leaking sewage into the ground under your conservatory for 8 years? If water leaks out during cleaning surely effluent will

Thank you. 💕 We've been on a long journey because the first dog that DD was matched with didn't settle at all well with us, or with the cats. We had her with us in mid-2024 for two months and she barked at the cats and chased them - just desperate to get to know her new furry housemates. She would never have hurt them, obviously the charity who supplied her wouldn't have sent her if she was dangerous to cats. But the cats did not know that!

We've done a lot of work in the intervening months, having dogs visit just for the afternoon on a regular basis and the cats learning that e.g. barking in the house didn't mean a dog actually trying to get to them. Judicious use of a stair gate to keep the cats upstairs and the dogs downstairs, which was fine because it was during the cats' main nap window anyway.

And we've been matched with an absolute diamond of a dog this time, she's a totally different energy and has found the cats no more interesting than anything else in our house! She's had a few good hisses from them but they haven't tried to attack, and she has correctly read the instruction not to get too close.

Yes, we absolutely keep the animals separate when we can't supervise - the dog won't be left home alone for a long time (and not much even then - as an assistance dog she will accompany DD rather than be left at home). And overnight, the dog has thus far been shut into DD's room with her while the cats have the run of the house. This will continue however we move forward, with the dog remaining in DD's room overnight (in a crate, so she can't jump on DD's bed and accidentally thwack her in the face with a stray paw in the night) or sleeping in the living room with the crate door open but the room door shut.

Crikey, I'm glad I name changed for this one. I've put so much identifying information in that if anyone reading this knows me in real life they will absolutely know who it is!

Quite possibly... and that thought will no doubt make it into my nightmares tonight. Thank you. 😆

Sounds like the dog will be fine, and the crate in DD’s bedroom is a good idea, especially if the dog has been used to sleeping in that room already.

I totally get how you’re feeling (from one ASD mum of ASD kids to another), everything just feels overwhelming as there’s a lot going on. But the waste pipe situation is out of your hands to an extent, that will be what it will be under whatever timescale the people that sort it can offer. Really there’s not much you can do there, make the phone calls tomorrow to get the ball rolling and then try and forget about that for now.

And yes, get the dog. And a camping toilet. Maybe DD won’t want to use it but at least the option is there then.

pedant alert

A friend of mine who was a plumber says that when the 'pipe' that a former colleague called the Turd Snaffling Pipe touches the ground it becomes a builders job not a plumbers

Check all your insurances. If contents doesn’t cover it, Buildings might.

Clearly you have a lot of variables but my philosophy on new animals is to go big with the integration. The dog and the cats will cope and then they’ll all settle down together as things quiet down.

Good Luck!

Thank you. You're right. If the pipe can somehow be magically opened today (Dyno have done it before, and the Metro lad didn't seem all that experienced) then we get the dog as planned. Likewise, if it's going to be weeks before we can have work done then we learn to cope without the upstairs bog and get the dog as planned anyway.

The only thing that would be a really bad idea, I think, is to get the dog and then have workmen descend within days. If that ends up being the plan, I'll talk to the charity about delaying for a couple of weeks.

Haha I like that phrase! Turd Snaffling Pipe. 🤣

Yeah it's definitely not a plumbing job, but a company like Dyno who are drainage specialists will do it. They just might require us to pull up the laminate ourselves, and they will definitely not do any relaying/replacing of floor covering or redecoration.

Contents definitely won't cover it - I don't think the contents of the soil pipe would be something I'd want to insure and replace in the event of theft, fire or flood. 😜

Definitely a Buildings job, but it'll depend on whether it's considered accidental damage or not. We don't have cover for accidental damage. The pipe likely got buggered when the previous owners put the conservatory on top of it.

Thank you, and often that will work but in our case we tried going big with the integration with DD's original assistance dog back in 2024.

After a few frantic chases, the result was traumatised cats who hid in a single room and wouldn't leave (I had to put a litter tray in that bedroom, yuck).

And a dog who arrived with a healthy interest in the cats, and left after two months absolutely obsessed with them and freaked out by these furry housemates that she could smell but never see. By the end she was barking and leaping at shadows on the conservatory roof, thinking she MIGHT have seen a cat. And tried to drag DD across a road when she saw a cat on the other side while out on a walk - it wasn't even moving, just frozen still. And this was despite all of the professional training she'd had to become an assistance dog!

She was rehomed as a pet by the charity. To a house without cats, obviously!

This time around we have a lot of dog gates with cat access panels in them. It's worked really well, the dog has always known that the cats are here and seen them plenty but not been able to get too close most of the time. We've had several successful meetings with the cats on one side of a gate and the dog on the other - cats learning that gate means safety and a hiss will be respected, dog learning that she doesn't get to go right up for a sniff to say hello. Things are looking much more positive this time.

I've not RTFT.
Depending on where the issue is along the run it would be worth exploring if you can fit a new soil pipe to join somewhere else along the pipe.
Then you don't have to pull up the conservatory floor.
Much less upheaval.

I think that if there is a way to shut off the conservatory temporarily whilst the work is being carried out then I would go ahead and get the dog as planned this week. As you mentioned, the dog is highly trained and is there to support your DD. I have had dogs for the last 17 years and they were not as trained as your dog but coped absolutely fine with various work being carried out. They most likely won't start digging up the conservatory on Tuesday or Wednesday so the dog will have a week or so of settling in beforehand.

I have had the same thing done in my back garden once and the work took about a day. They removed about a square meter of paving stones, dug down, fixed the issue, filled it all in again. I realise it's a bigger job since it's under the conservatory but it might not be quite as disruptive as you think. I think the reactions of the people you live with makes it seem worse than it's going to be for you,

Don't worry about the dog not having access to the garden during the time the work is being carried out. It's not a tiny puppy so she will be able to go for regular walks and can hold her pee for hours.

So think of this as a series of problems rather than one.

Upstairs toilet not in use. What could help?
For example: Get a commode and dd use it. If she will? No night trips. You can empty it into downstairs in the morning.