jadedmusings | Fun with indoor plumbing

So, my weekend was pretty shitty. Literally. No, I assure you I am using literally appropriately.

Saturday night, I decided to take a nice, relaxing bath. You know, soak in the warm water, wash my hair, shave my legs, etc. The bath was uneventful, and about fifteen minutes before I got out, I heard the kiddo use the toilet in the other bathroom. Nothing unusual and pretty standard fare.

I pulled the plug on the bath drain and stood up to wrap my hair in a towel. By the time I grabbed my other towel to start drying off my face and upper body, I notice the water is still around my ankles, and I don't hear the sound of water draining. Hmm, I think, must be running slow is all. I shrug it off until I hear what I think sounds like running water on the other side of the house. Not a good sign.

Thinking the kiddo was unusually bad and had decided to play with the faucet on other bathtub (the one I can't use because it's cracked and needs replacing), I wrap the towel around me and go to the other end of the house to the other bathroom and what do I see? My hallway carpet is wet and the toilet is overflowing. The running water sound I heard? Yeah, that was the water draining down into the air vent on the bathroom floor near the door. Shit.

Next, my eyes go to the bathtub, which has inexplicably filled with water despite the faucet not being turned on. I tried plunging the toilet first, and it stopped overflowing. I thought the problem was solved, except I turned back to the bathtub to see water was flowing up out of the drain and into the tub; water along with sewage, that is. Again, this is the tub that has a small crack on the bottom that can't be used for much more than filling the mop bucket. Fuck. My only consolation at this point was that at least the toilet had gone down and no longer pouring water over the floor.

I used up all my (freshly laundered!) towels soaking up the water and preventing even more from going down in the vent. I called Mom to inform her of what was going on, and I asked if the kiddo could stay with her that night and could I please use her washing machine since I knew it was a bad idea for me to use my washer. She agreed, and it was still only about 8:30/9:00 on a Saturday night, so I took them both out to Huddle House to eat while my towels were being washed at her house (in hot water for obvious reasons). By that point, Mom had called a plumbing company she knew for me, and the plumber said he'd be calling me at nine the next morning.

I sent the kiddo to her house, and I came back home to bitch to Sam over the phone (have I mentioned I have a very patient and understanding boyfriend?). Oddly enough, once I'd done my bitching, the conversation was nice and helped me relax enough that I could at least get some rest so I could be up early to straighten up my living room, change out the towels in the bathroom, and clean up my master bath and bedroom since I thought he might have to go into them as well. The plumber was supposed to call at 9:00. He didn't get a chance to call me until about 10 or so, and he didn't get to my house until around 11:45.

His first suggestion, after coming inside to see the affected bathroom, was that it was possibly the septic tank. My bank account whimpered in fear. My blood pressure rose a couple of points. Fortunately for both my bank account and I, a quick check of the septic pipe leading out of my house determined the problem was contained inside the pipes in the house. My pipes were too small for his hand snake to go up in the house, so he had to use a special snake machine that ran on electricity. When going at it from the outside proved not to be working, he then had to go under my house and go at the pipes under there. After about an hour, he had managed to find the clog, cleared it, and I was once again able to have running water and working toilets.

When he came out of the house, he told me that over time some of my pipes had settled forming "bellies" where water pools instead of drains. This leads to clogs, and he said there is about twenty feet of pipe that needs to be replaced, but for now I'll be okay. He said he'd call back to schedule an appointment to replace the pipe, and that it'd actually be cheaper than my bill for the work he'd done to remove the clog. He didn't even charge me extra for coming out here on a Sunday, and I'm glad to say the bill was under two hundred dollars, which means when the pipe is replaced this adventure will still cost me only about half as much as it did when my electricity went out due to my breaker box needing to be completely replaced. (Remember that adventure back in November? Oh yeah, that also happened on a Sunday morning. My house likes to break at times when no one is working/available apparently.)

The great thing about all this is? I only have the bathtub to clear out of sewage. I'll be using bleach on the whole bathroom, but at least it's only the tub. It could be worse, and I have had worse. About four years ago, tree roots had grown to block the septic tank at the other house. That time both toilets and bathtubs backed up and sent sewage all over my floor, the tubs, and the toilets. Clean up from that was not fun to put it mildly. My master bathroom here remained un affected, and it's already clean, so today it's just a matter of mopping the floor in the other bathroom and scrubbing out the tub with bleach. Oh, and I'll be steam cleaning that section of carpet as well. All in all, this was an easy repair.

I have other stuff to report, but it's stuff I don't want posted publicly, and this entry is getting long anyway.