Did You Ever Have "One of those Weekends"?
Aug. 2nd, 2017 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cjlasky7After a long weekend, I'm back at work.
Thank God I'm finally out of the house.
It all started on Saturday afternoon, when we were pulling out of the driveway for a lovely family outing to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. We noticed that there was standing water surrounding the driveway drain. "Did it rain last night?" asked my wife. "No," I replied.
Uh oh.
We'd been having problems with the downstairs shower (slow runoff), and I'd been trying to clear the clog with drain cleaners. No luck. Now, it seems the problem had spread to the general sewer line. It was time to call on (ugh) professional help.
Goodbye family outing for dad.
The plumbers came in to try to snake out our main sewer line--but they couldn't get to the clog. Apparently, the clog was at the point where our pipeline connected to the street. Accessing that point would mean accessing the trap door that we believed was buried under a foot of cement in our basement closet. Digging that out was gonna cost money. They'd come back Monday morning to tell me how much.
(Note the qualifiers "apparently" and "we believed"; we'll come back to those later.)
Until Monday, we had to be careful about water usage, or risk a messy overflow. So... no showers. Limited flushes. Washing dishes? (Well, if you must....) Oh, that didn't create tension in the house at all...
Fortunately, the wife and boy left for Philly on one of their mini-vacays on Sunday morning, giving me precious alone time to prepare for Monday. Cleaning out that basement closet (probably for the first time since 1957); shuttling all the old paint cans and spare parts from closet to closet; and moving basement furniture together into a giant mass, then covering it with a tarp. (Hey, when the family's away, I know how to have fun!)
Monday morning. The plumbers' supervisor handled the walkthrough. Breaking through cement, maybe building a new trap, cleaning the line, hey those threads on your hot water heater look like they're ready to go....
I swallowed the price tag (went down rough), and told him to send the boys in and get started. Oh no, he told me. We won't have a crew ready until tomorrow. But I have to be at work tomorrow, I replied. Nobody's going to be home. Hey, no problem, he said. Just get one of those lockboxes, and--
I called work and told them I needed Tuesday off.
Monday afternoon, I stopped off at my mother's house for a hot shower and a shave. (She called me her "refugee.") I finished watching Season 3 of Fargo. And at midnight, I watched Eraserhead for the first time ever. Yeah, I was in that kind of mood.
On Tuesday, the crew came in right on time. I heard the sound of jackhammers in the basement. Then, the hammering noticeably stopped. The crew leader called me downstairs.
He'd broken through the cement in the closet to where we thought the trap would be--but the trap wasn't there. The trap was actually IN FRONT of the closet, easily accessible by just peeling back the linoleum. Breaking the cement was completely unnecessary. (Heck, if we'd known, we could have cleaned the pipes years ago.)
After absorbing that bit of news, I went back upstairs and let them do their jobs. Everything seemed to go well enough. My water heater was repaired without needing a replacement (phew); they filled in the hole in the closet floor with fresh concrete; water flow was restored, and the basement didn't look too bad. So when the plumbers left, I cleaned up and waited for the family to come home Tuesday night.
My wife made it home after a long drive from Philly. She was hot and tired, and all she wanted was a nice, relaxing shower in the downstairs bathroom, her home away from home.
You probably know where this is going:
The water was still backing up in the shower.
I had been so obsessed about getting the sewer line clean and restoring full water usage in the house, that I FORGOT ABOUT THE ORIGINAL PROBLEM.
My wife was real thrilled about that.
So, the plumbers are coming back on Thursday and they're going to clear that shower, come hell or (sic) high water. I hope that'll be the end of it. But right now, I'm just glad to be out of the house.
ETA (9/3/17): Plumbers found a sock in the shower drain. I have no idea how it got there. Water flowing smoothly now.
If we got the sock out a few weeks ago, could we have avoided this whole megillah? We may never know.
Thank God I'm finally out of the house.
It all started on Saturday afternoon, when we were pulling out of the driveway for a lovely family outing to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. We noticed that there was standing water surrounding the driveway drain. "Did it rain last night?" asked my wife. "No," I replied.
Uh oh.
We'd been having problems with the downstairs shower (slow runoff), and I'd been trying to clear the clog with drain cleaners. No luck. Now, it seems the problem had spread to the general sewer line. It was time to call on (ugh) professional help.
Goodbye family outing for dad.
The plumbers came in to try to snake out our main sewer line--but they couldn't get to the clog. Apparently, the clog was at the point where our pipeline connected to the street. Accessing that point would mean accessing the trap door that we believed was buried under a foot of cement in our basement closet. Digging that out was gonna cost money. They'd come back Monday morning to tell me how much.
(Note the qualifiers "apparently" and "we believed"; we'll come back to those later.)
Until Monday, we had to be careful about water usage, or risk a messy overflow. So... no showers. Limited flushes. Washing dishes? (Well, if you must....) Oh, that didn't create tension in the house at all...
Fortunately, the wife and boy left for Philly on one of their mini-vacays on Sunday morning, giving me precious alone time to prepare for Monday. Cleaning out that basement closet (probably for the first time since 1957); shuttling all the old paint cans and spare parts from closet to closet; and moving basement furniture together into a giant mass, then covering it with a tarp. (Hey, when the family's away, I know how to have fun!)
Monday morning. The plumbers' supervisor handled the walkthrough. Breaking through cement, maybe building a new trap, cleaning the line, hey those threads on your hot water heater look like they're ready to go....
I swallowed the price tag (went down rough), and told him to send the boys in and get started. Oh no, he told me. We won't have a crew ready until tomorrow. But I have to be at work tomorrow, I replied. Nobody's going to be home. Hey, no problem, he said. Just get one of those lockboxes, and--
I called work and told them I needed Tuesday off.
Monday afternoon, I stopped off at my mother's house for a hot shower and a shave. (She called me her "refugee.") I finished watching Season 3 of Fargo. And at midnight, I watched Eraserhead for the first time ever. Yeah, I was in that kind of mood.
On Tuesday, the crew came in right on time. I heard the sound of jackhammers in the basement. Then, the hammering noticeably stopped. The crew leader called me downstairs.
He'd broken through the cement in the closet to where we thought the trap would be--but the trap wasn't there. The trap was actually IN FRONT of the closet, easily accessible by just peeling back the linoleum. Breaking the cement was completely unnecessary. (Heck, if we'd known, we could have cleaned the pipes years ago.)
After absorbing that bit of news, I went back upstairs and let them do their jobs. Everything seemed to go well enough. My water heater was repaired without needing a replacement (phew); they filled in the hole in the closet floor with fresh concrete; water flow was restored, and the basement didn't look too bad. So when the plumbers left, I cleaned up and waited for the family to come home Tuesday night.
My wife made it home after a long drive from Philly. She was hot and tired, and all she wanted was a nice, relaxing shower in the downstairs bathroom, her home away from home.
You probably know where this is going:
The water was still backing up in the shower.
I had been so obsessed about getting the sewer line clean and restoring full water usage in the house, that I FORGOT ABOUT THE ORIGINAL PROBLEM.
My wife was real thrilled about that.
So, the plumbers are coming back on Thursday and they're going to clear that shower, come hell or (sic) high water. I hope that'll be the end of it. But right now, I'm just glad to be out of the house.
ETA (9/3/17): Plumbers found a sock in the shower drain. I have no idea how it got there. Water flowing smoothly now.
If we got the sock out a few weeks ago, could we have avoided this whole megillah? We may never know.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-03 01:14 am (UTC)