Friday, September 15, 2006

Follow your nose

We started to notice some, well, issues in the morning with some pretty yucky water backing up into our laundry tubs. I of course immediately figured "oh great, just what we need, a super expensive problem that will likely require us calling some plumber dude who walks around with his ass hanging out his pants, digging up the front yard and replacing all the pipe in the house, and writing him a big fat cheque with lots of zeroes before the decimal point on it while he touched everything in the house so I would be unable to keep a mental list of what he had touched and would be slowly driven insane trying to remember what items I had to soak in bleach and scour until my hands were raw to prevent certain e.coli and cauliform contamination from his sewage-ey hands."

Luckily, in a fit of reasonableness I called the region and they sent two nice (if somewhat gruff) dudes to clear the sewer line from our house out to the main line today. They sent their thingy down the pipe in our basement, cleared the tree root that was apparently obstructing it at no cost, and were on their (unmerry?) way, leaving us to marinate in the bleach fumes from our near toxic-levels use of it in the basement. Dave did most of the primary (read really gross) cleanup and I'll likely do the neurotic level one tomorrow to finish things off. We figured we'd let it pickle overnight for good measure. I'd pick the smell of bleach anyday over sewage though. It's practically a comforting smell at this point.

And, I'm really glad I'm not these dudes. Man that'd suck.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

EWWW.....

MM said...

I'm sorry. I thought I was having a bad day...I found you through Bub and Pie. Beatiful Picture, lovely life (well, mostly) and great link.

Anonymous said...

YUCK. That's just awful. The smell of bleach gives me a roaring headache, but yeah -- it's better than sewage.

Anonymous said...

Okay...that's just nasty. I, too, would prefer the smell of bleach.

ElaineMI said...

This little hint won't cure tree roots growing in the pipes, HOWEVER, if you have a slow moving drain, use Alka-Selzer (I start out with about 5 tablets), 1 cup of white vinegar, let set for 15, 20 minutes then flush with HOT water. You may have to do this a couple times and even plunge a little but it works wonders and will keep the drain moving for a long time to come. I got this suggestion off the internet and it does work.

Anonymous said...

I'm impressed you called the region - I probably would have messed around with high costs and plumber ass for at least a week before I figured out there might be a bureaucratic solution. Huzzah!

Her Bad Mother said...

You were lucky. Our neighbours just had that problem and the City made them pay half.

And they were without bath, shower, or laundry for a week.

Heather said...

Elaine: ew is right!

Merry Mama: It really wasn't that bad (I guess re-reading that post it seems really doom and gloom) I was just happy to have the problem fixed!

mamatulip: Awful, but fixed! The bleach smell reminds me of way too many years in competitive swimming as a kid.

wordgirl: Nasty but fixed!

elainemi: I'm a big fan of the 2 second plumber that sends CO2 down the drain to clear clogs.

roro: I'm not too proud to admit that I ran around (almost in circles) wondering what the h, e, double hockeysticks to do.

Her Bad Mother: I think every jurisdiction does it differently - I'm just glad ours coveed it (practicaly no questions asked) and we didn't need to dig up the whole front lawn to solve the problem (where would the dandilions go?).