Why North Aurora sewer quotes go out a week after the camera

It is Tuesday morning at a split-level in North Aurora. The basement floor drain backed up Sunday night. You rodded the line Monday and the cutter came back wrapped in roots, so today you are back with the camera. At 52 feet the picture changes: a clay joint shifted half an inch, roots packed into the gap, water standing behind it. The locator puts it about seven feet down, a few feet past the sidewalk.

The homeowner has been watching the monitor over your shoulder, and she asks what that costs.

You cannot say yet. Seven feet down is a different dig than four, and past the sidewalk means the parkway and whatever the village wants before you open it. A spot repair might hold, or the honest answer might be the whole run from the foundation, and you need the excavator's price either way. So you promise a number in a couple of days, and because she pushes, you give her a rough range. She writes it on the back of an envelope.

By Thursday the excavator still has not called back, and the recording is still on the camera's USB stick. You write the estimate Saturday morning at the kitchen table. Two other plumbers have run their cameras down her line by then.

What a slow sewer quote costs

Mostly it costs you the job. She has been told the roots will grow back, so every load of laundry feels like a gamble, and she books whoever can come out next. The first plumber who puts a clear written plan in front of her sets the reference point, and every quote after that gets read against it.

The range you gave in the basement makes it worse. You guessed before anything was priced, so when the written number lands above it, she reads the gap as a bait and switch, even though Saturday's number is the honest one.

She saw the video for about thirty seconds while you talked. By Friday she cannot describe it to her husband, and the shop that texted her the clip with the break marked at 52 feet looks like the one that knows her line.

Paperwork adds its own delay. For home repair contracts over $1,000, Illinois requires the contractor to hand over the "Home Repair: Know Your Consumer Rights" pamphlet before the contract is signed, with a signed acknowledgment that the customer got it (815 ILCS 513/20). Whether a given job falls under the Act is a question for your lawyer. If that form lives in a drawer at the shop, a job she already agreed to waits on another trip.

What the same Tuesday looks like with a quoting system

The estimate gets drafted from your own prices while you are still in the driveway, and she has it that evening.

• You save the camera recording the way you already do. At the truck you talk into your phone for two minutes: footage to the defect, depth, pipe material, what you would recommend, and anything about the driveway or the parkway. Photos of the cleanout and the yard go up from the same phone.
• All of it attaches to her job, which already exists from her call Sunday night.
• The system drafts the estimate from your price book, using your dig rates by depth, fittings, the cleanout, restoration, and permit fees from a table you keep for each town. The options sit side by side: spot repair at the joint, full replacement to the main, and lining if you offer it.
• When your book cannot price something, the draft flags it and leaves it blank. Your excavator gets a text with the address, depth, and footage, and his reply goes into the draft.
• The draft is on your phone before you get home. You fix what is wrong, set the final number, and approve it.
• She gets it under your name: each option with a plain explanation you wrote once, the clip cued to the break, the pamphlet and acknowledgment in the format your lawyer approves, a signature link, and a deposit link if you take one.
• When she signs and picks a date, the JULIE locate request lands on your list, timed to that date. The ticket has to go in at least two days before the dig and no more than ten, not counting weekends, JULIE holidays, or the day you submit it (JULIE).
• If she goes quiet, follow-up takes over. I wrote about that half for St. Charles plumbers.

I built the intake side of this for a freight forwarder whose quote requests used to arrive as loose email and now come in structured, with what is needed to price them. A sewer estimate has more moving parts, but it breaks the same way: the details exist at the job and get lost before anyone writes the estimate.

What stays with you

Reading the camera picture is your job. So is deciding between a spot repair and a new line, and knowing when lining is wrong for this particular pipe. You set the number, and nothing goes out until you approve it.

A big dig usually deserves a phone call, and you make it. If she asks whether her homeowner's policy covers any of it, that is between her and her agent, and the system does not answer. If she replies that the other shop came in lower, the automated messages stop and she hears from you. You also decide what counts as an emergency. Sewage coming up through the floor drain today should reach a person right away.

When this is not worth building

If you price most sewer work on the spot from a flat rate sheet, you already have this. If you dig two lines a year, write those estimates by hand. And if your dig pricing lives in your head, it has to go into a price book first. After that, builds start at $500 one time, then a flat monthly from $99 after an included run-in period, cancellable. More on the plumbing page and on automation for Illinois businesses.

Where to start

The first step is a free 20 minute process audit. We pull last season's sewer jobs, count the days from camera to written estimate, and look at which ones went to someone else. If a system pays for itself, build it. If it does not, you keep the map. Start here.