Plumbing Woes

Before we purchased our new house on Wind Ridge, we of course got a thorough inspection, which indicated it was in pretty good shape.  After moving in, however, we noticed that the downstairs Jack and Jill bathroom between Kylee's room and the office would flush once, but subsequently had a weak flush if at all.  I did some major plunging and then purchased and used a drain snake with no effect.  Not clear on what exactly the problem was, I decided to just swap out the toilet which I figured would still be less expensive than calling a  plumber out to the house...but still no resolution.  So I gave in and called a plumber who was able to send a camera down the pipe and figure out there was a break underneath the foundation.  Apparently the dirt that filled the very deep foundation on the downhill side of the house was not compacted well enough at the time the plumbing was installed, and as it settled the weight pulled the horizontal run of pipe away from the pipe coming down through the floor.  We got several quotes on the repair ranging from $7,000 to $11,000.  We went with the low bid, but after jack hammering through several feet of solid rock just to get up under the house, fixing the break, and then discovering and fixing three more breaks, we arrived at a final bill of $15,000.  I did some investigating to the extent of tracking down the previous tenants to verify that the seller had not knowingly concealed the problem, which was not the case.  It was a painful bill to pay right after moving in, but we had some consolation knowing that, had we known about the magnitude of the problem before hand and had the chance to back out, we still would have considered this house well worth the price.