Wednesday 8:30 AM: I'm just about ready to go to work, almost. i flush the toilet & instead of going down it comes up & over the bowl & won't stop. Slippers are flung off behind me & bail-out mode commences . i use my big tea mug (with still plenty of tea in it) to bail into the bathtub. After about 2 minutes it stops. Jack is barking and trying to get in, past the towel brigade i threw down on the ground & is already soaked through. I grab more towels and begin plunging. I flush again & the waterfall begins once again. Bail out mode & then everything is in about 1 inch of water & we're at a stopping point.
Next step: Call my best gal & she is on the way with a hefty plunger (wooden handle & all, see pic!) within 10 minutes. I call work & say there's been a delay, hopefully in by 11 am [ahh, little did i know i meant 11 am Monday morning]. Heavy-duty plunging begins (see pic). No love. The toilet is still unhappy, but only water now & my tea mug will never be the same.
Next step: Call in reinforments. Luckily, my gal has a good friend who is a plumber. We call Craig & he tells us to just plunge it.... Uhm, Craig, we're straddling toilets here, it ain't working. He comes over & thinks we need to snake it.
12 PM: Call some snake guys, total creeps & won't do it, 'cause there is no clean out [A "clean out" is a supplemental outpost for icky things to come away from your house... so your sink doesn't overflow, it goes through the clean-out. Each drain should have one.] The house had a clean-out for every other #$)%? drain, but not one for the toilet, of course.
2 PM: Craig comes back with reinforcements & they crawl under the house & dig a bit to make a clean-out, yeah!
3:45 PM: The clean-out is ready. The large snake only goes about 5 feet & then nothing. After several tries, Craig returns with a smaller snake. It goes about 8 feet & comes back with icky roots, upon roots & sludge & a rag (?!?). Craig reports that he's never not been able to get this small snake through. Naturally, my situation breaks that trend. We're gonna have to dig & we think we have to dig IN the garage. That's right, the concrete slabbed garage. i call my tenant to let him know he needs his cars outta the garage by 8am. oh, and don't use the toliet or shower. NICE.
Thursday, 8 AM: Measure out where the issue is. Now, sewer lines are generally laid in the street, each edifice is responsible for their own sewer line & the connection to the main line. It appears that my casa is no exception, there's a man-hole just past my house. We determine the line isn't in the garage, but right outside it, hurrah! Hole #1 is begun about 5 feet from the clean-out. Jack-hammering through brick, mortar & concrete. Dig through hard packed dirt & roots.
10:30 AM: And dig. Dig for over five feet down, nothing. NO PIPE. Sh*t. So now we have to make a hole right outside the under-the house access, where we KNOW the pipe is. And dig...
2 PM: And dig. 6 feet down & there's a pipe, a sewer pipe, awesome. More digging & we cut a piece of the pipe out & get the camera scope through. Not a root problem. A cracked pipe with metal jutting out, obstructing about half the pipe. Of course the camera won't go any further. We know we're going to replace this section of pipe, but we can't see past to see if that is it. Also, the pipe is going out, perpendicular from the house...
3 PM: We have to dig another hole. This one is about 4 feet South of hole #2. This one is about 8 feet deep. This concludes Thursday.
Friday 8 AM: 8 foot hole, needs to be dug out underneath from the pipe. We've found where the laundry meets the sewer, right before the city line... very odd, very cruddy & deteriorated. Another joint is unearthed & it is completely clogged with roots. Are we having fun yet, or what?
10 AM: We've cut the pipe & are camera scoping and there is this weird section that the camera can't get through. Cut into the pipe and a section has the top half of it collapsed into itself with muck stuck in it. The whole old cruddy sewer line is broken-up & removed.
1:30 PM: We're camera scoping again & we've snuck a water hose down the entire length of the tunnel & guess what?!? We get ALL THE WAY TO THE CITY LINE. No way. And the city line is running great, i see where my neighbor's lines funnel in & everything is running swimmingly.
2 PM: Game plan: Replace the main line & hook it all up in 1.5 hours. Now we have to trench out a whole section to re-pipe the laundry's drain, that will happen tomorrow. Restore the backyard will begin Monday.
4 PM: I can flush the toilet! The rest has to wait, because why? oh, it starts RAINING. And it is still raining. Great.
For other pics of this event, check out Craig's website (yup, my problem is already emblematic for drain replacements, apparently. The first 2 aren't me, but the rest certainly are. Have your dirt pile over here, your-- Yeah, i'm channeling Money Pit).
