too many words by laura lemay

The sewer incident

I got to discover the joys of living in a house yesterday morning. The following is my adventure with the underground sewage system around my house.

It all started yesterday morning, when I got up as usual, wandered into the bathroom, as usual, and found that the toilet was stopped up. Oh joy. An hour and a half later armed with a plunger and a toilet unstopping snake thingy, I had managed to flood my bathroom repeatedly, use up my entire months water allowance, and put myself in a truly vile mood (the “toad-stomping mood” of yesterday.)

Working under the theory of “ignore it, maybe it’ll go away,” I went into work and instead sat at my computer and fumed. After lunch I decided the best plan was to go home and call a plumber and get it over with.

So I went home. And discovered in short order that my *other* toilet was also plugged up. Ooooh. So I called my landlord, and had an educational discussion about the terms of my lease. Seems that if *I* plug up the drains, *I* have to call the plumber and *I* have to pay for it. The landlord is only repsonsible if it has nothing to do with the house. Creative, no?

While I’m arguing with the landlord, I look out the back window and discover a veritable pond of brackish sewer water in by back yard. Seems that the cover to the sewser system for all the units in the area has backed up and blown the cover to the pipe off its threads.

So the landlord sees my point of view. 🙂 And calls the plumber.

Five hours later, the plumber arrives, and carts an ugly looking drain unclogging thing with spikes on it into the back and starts feeding it into the drain. About 20 feet in and theres a crunch. He wiggles it around, and there’s was another large crunch, then the sewer gurgles and all the water drains down. Aha.

So he continues to sump out the line, and I ask him what the blockage was, and he says it was probably roots, or maybe something someone had flushed down the drain. Lovely, says I.

Then he pulls the big evil drain unclogging thing back up through the drains, and on the end of the spikes is a rather large grey sodden furry thing. I look dubiously at the sewer guy who looks dubiously at me, and goes, “roots.” He then tosses the thing into a bag and retreats with it. “Roots?” I reply, dubiously, and he turns back and goes “roots and nasties.”

Ah. I don’t want to know.

In any case, everything is working again.

Well, almost everything, cause while I was sitting around waiting for the plumber to show up, my cable box died. Yay.

sigh.