Landlords & Property Managers — Drain Problems, Who Pays, Proof on Camera

Tennessee's Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act puts the duty in one sentence of Tenn. Code §66-28-304(a): the landlord must "make all repairs and do whatever is necessary to put and keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition." Read it carefully, because this page will: the statute never says the word "plumbing." It doesn't need to. A sewer line that backs sewage into a unit is a habitability failure by any reading, URLTA gives the tenant a cure framework (14 days is the Act's standard cure window), and a landlord who treats a failed lateral as the tenant's inconvenience is building a legal problem on top of a plumbing one. Two hats sit on the same head here, and it's worth separating them: the lateral itself — the pipe from the building to the public main — belongs to the property owner under Metro Code §15.40.050 regardless of who occupies the unit, which is the who-owns page's subject. Occupation doesn't move the pipe. It only decides who pays for a stoppage.

The founding story for this page is a Nashville review, from a man who manages maintenance for 170 rental units in this city. His account of a national-name drain vendor: a first visit that failed to clear the drain; a second visit where the snaking broke through the pipe with water flowing, leaked through the ceiling into the unit below, and the technician packed up and left — and the firm still charged, for a drain that was never cleared. A companion review from the same market: a customer told there were no roots in his line who dug his own yard, found roots, and watched it back up again.

For a portfolio, that's the actual risk profile. Not the per-visit price — the unverifiable visit. The job you can't prove happened, the damage with no terms agreed in advance, the invoice for work nobody can confirm. So our standard deliverable per job, written here so it can be quoted back to us: the camera footage file, a written fault note naming the cause in plain language, and an invoice that matches the quote — a package a property manager can forward to an owner, a tenant, or an insurer without translating it. And damage-and-charging terms in writing, before you book: if our work ever damages a line, the terms governing it are in the written service document — the market's counter-example above is named as a pattern, not an accusation, because the pattern is what a portfolio is actually buying protection against.

This section is written to be forwarded to tenants — landlords and managers have our permission and encouragement to send the link.

1. Stop running water to the affected fixtures. A backup grows with every flush.
2. Call your property manager or landlord first. The repair duty and the vendor choice are theirs; a tenant-booked repair can land in a payment dispute nobody needs.
3. If neighbours are affected or sewage is surfacing outside, it's possibly the city's main — Metro Water Services, 615-862-4600, option 3, runs a free main-clog investigation.
4. Keep people and pets off anything sewage touched, and don't pour chemical openers into a stopped line — tell whoever comes that anything was used.
5. Take photos. Timestamps settle timelines, and timelines settle deposit conversations.