[jyl]

Update.

Sewer scope guy comes out. Good guy. First thing he says is, he's not going to scope my system, because if he sees I'm the guest on a party line, he has to report it to the city. Instead, he suggests just scoping my neighbor's system. So the three of us are in my neighbor's basement, watching the image from the scope, at 130 feet which is well into the street.

Verdict: cast iron pipes under the house, 6" clay to the public sewer branch. The pipes are in great condition, no damage, cracks, breaks. At the joints where the street starts, there is a lot of root intrusion, solid mass of roots with just the 2-3" openings made by the RotoRooter crew. For $350, a local hydrocutter company can clear out all the root material, completely eliminate any future backing up issues. An annual application of Root-X will keep the roots from regrowing. No, none, zero reason to replace, reline, or otherwise repair the sewer system.

We saw the branch going off to my house. Yes, we are on a party line. Still a little unclear who is the host and who is the guest. The branch connection (the "Y") is on my property, he says, but the sewer enters the street a few feet on my neighbor's side of the property line.

So neighbor and I are both happy. We'll split the cost of the hydrocutter guy. My part of the system won't be hydrocut, but I think it's okay - the connection is pretty close to my house, this not that much clay pipe on my part, there are no trees there, and I've never had any backing up problems anyway. The main root intrusion issues appear to be downstream of the connection. The reason my neighbor has problems and I don't is that my house is higher than his, so when his nanny clogs up the party line with her wipes and tampons, the backup comes out in my neighbor's basement.

The only problem will be if RotoRooter reported the party line to the city, which they sometimes do in hopes of generating business. If we do have to bring both sewers up to code, it'll cost my neighbor about $3500-4000 and me about $9000-10000.