I bought the house in 2013. It was built in 1953 and has few improvements (I like it that way). There is a basement bar sink that would back up frequently that was also on the same line as the kitchen. I thought it was due to tree roots and kitchen gunk and would periodically have someone root it.
A month ago I had plumbers come in for some unrelated work and another rooter job. This plumber was a bit more on top of things than the others. He found that the pipe from the kitchen and basement bar went the opposite way that the main sewer out to the street. He pulled out a bunch of roots and sent a camera out...165 feet into darkness (there's nothing back there, its a field) Turns out the camera was just circling the inside of a round single chamber cement septic tank.
They dug out the pipe going to the septic and replaced the piping to the tank. With help I dug out the top of the tank to find all the portals and determine the size. It was pumped and has a lot of dead roots in it. The drain field pipe was found but it was no longer attached to the tank and was much lower than the tank as to be ineffective. Likely some heavy machinery drove over it at some point to make it that way.
So, around $10k later in plumbing bills I still have a failed grey water septic tank that has no recent records at the county. The county department that would do an archival record check is not responding after repeated attempts. I can see the county parcel records back to '93 and there is no mention of any septic system through 5 various forms of ownership transfers.
My home insurance documents say it doesn't cover septic. I haven't asked if they cover undisclosed septic systems. I don't think title insurance comes into play here, but I am posting here to see if anyone has other ideas.
What is my recourse? I would prefer not pay to fix the failed septic & drain field that no one disclosed to me if at all possible. I'm not even sure that I could legally repair it in this day and age without changes anyway. Also, the drain field points right into a clump of 100 ft cedars. I'm checking if the reddit real estate hive mind has ideas as to how to go about this.
PS: We had to break up cement and take apart deck stairs to uncover the tank as someone conveniently put that right over it. So, maybe someone knew about it but that will likely be impossible to prove.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/j2eg9u/undisclosed_grey_water_septic_tank_wa_state_king/
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