It started last night when Noahkila noticed water on the floor in the basement ... OH, were it to be so ... if ONLY it was water ...The backed up Floor Drain shifted our water usage to "minimal" ... the mess on the floor transcended the description "disgusting" ... thanks be to God that the basement is largely unfinished and the way it was created when the house was built in 1901 ...
A phone call first thing this morning put in motion a visit from our friendly neighbourhood Plumber who knows this house very, very well ...
In the middle of the afternoon the plumbers arrived with the tools of their trade ... somewhere along the way Mr Murphy snuck in with them and made his presence known immediately ...
At first glance it was a simple plug somewhere just below the floor drain ... WRONG !!!
The first plunge of the light duty router, or snake, did nothing ... The second plunge was equally ineffective ...
Next came the shop vac and the floor drain was cleaned ... along the way came an assortment of plastic, a few pieces of wood !!!, and some other unrecognizable debris that was hindering the drain ... BUT ... the plug remained ...
Next came the heavy duty industrial snake ... but first the access port on the pipe needed to be removed - no small feat - It wasn't going down without a fight ... and it was quite the fight, but when the reciprocating saw was hauled out the access port gave up the ghost (in several pieces) and the port was opened for business ...
The plumber started feeding in the line ... inch by inch it went ... not change ... then at the 75' mark the end of the line had been reached and there was no change to the plugged line ... on went another 25' of line ... at the 80' mark the motor started to labour, then at about the 90' mark the water suddenly cleared and the plug was GONE ...
But Mr. Murphy wasn't done with us yet ... another three or four feet was fed down the drain:
And suddenly EVERYTHING JAMMED up tight ...
The snake was stuck and it wasn't going forward nor back ... after a half an hour of trying everything he could think of, the Plumber called both his Boss and the Town ... 90' of line was fed out and it wasn't budging !!!
It was thought a backhoe might be needed to unjam the line and see what the problem was ... (insert scream of terror here!!) ... The town guy arrived, surveyed the situation, and discussed with the plumber where exactly the sewer line ran out of the house ... they couldn't agree - one said front, one said back ...
The town guy left to find a map and see what it said, and the plumber's boss arrived to survey the situation ... He decided to try and pull the snake out ... Eventually it worked ... there was some swearing, a few loud bangs, a twist in the snake, a kink in the snake and eventually all 100' feet of snake line was pulled back out of the tiny 3" hole it had been shoved down ...
The call to the backhoe had been averted (for now) and our water line is once again clear ... leaving a mess in the basement to be cleaned up ... and when the town guy came back, after consulting the map there was still a debate on where the sewer leaves the house ...
So, right now Mr. Murphy has been shown the door and everything is okay ... I can't wait to have a shower tonight ... had to forgo it last night ... and right now, I have NOTHING but praise and adulation for our plumber ... they've NEVER failed us !!!! And today stands as a testimony to that!!!
2 comments:
Oh,oh,oh...we did this just six months ago at our house. Only our plumber (who we weren't grateful to in the least) said we needed a new sewer main (after snaking through our toilet and running a camera down there to show us exactly why). We sent him on his way (with 800 of our dollars!) and haven't had a problem since (knock on wood--or should I say, knock on pipe...)
Sorry Shawn, but this was kind of gross... or to use Nic's words, "that's just sic!"
Glad you got the problem resolved.
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