Worst Case Scenario
April 18th, 2006Nope. I’m not talking about the White House.
I’m talking about our house.
I had a root canal scheduled for today, but the dentist took some more x-rays and decided to let me try to medicate for a bit to be certain. Because the crown that he just put in on the tooth that might need the root canal may only need a few more days of anti-inflammatories to calm down. But the crown and the resulting stories from the pain are for another day.
What we are going to talk about today is shit. Or the line that the shit travels in when it’s supposed to leave your house. Doctors call it the sewer line. Ours is jacked about sixty ways to your favorite deity (or non-deity).
Here’s the timeline:
Tuesday of last week: We take DORJ! to the airport last week and the next day I notice some weird debris in the shower. At first I just thought it might have been DORJ!-related, but upon closer inspection of the basement area, realize that it’s not DORJ! related in the least. It’s a drain problem. I figure, hey, maybe it’s the wet spring. Maybe it’s just that the city drains are overwhelmed. Sure. That’s what it is. It’s not my problem.
Friday of last week: Leta goes to visit Grandmommy while Heather and I clean up the basement in preparation for a minor facelift we’ve been planning for a couple of years. New carpet, some tile, maybe a new vanity in the basement bathroom… maybe some new tile in the shower… Nothing too crazy, but enough to make us feel like the basement is ours again after the tumultuous teen years of our former Congressman dog turned goth. We get it done and I’m feeling like a million dollars. Except for the crowned tooth. That is kicking my ass. I’m barely able to stand it. Heather tells me I need an attitude adjustment. I agree and apologize. We have a visit from a landscaping dude to estimate what it’s going to take to de-ghettofy our front yard, which is an embarrassment to both Heather and I.
Weekend: I’m in tooth-related pain most of the weekend. Heather loans me some Neurontin. Just a half-dosage knocks me so hard on my ass that I’m pretty much useless until Easter Sunday night when I finally mow the lawn, because anything I can do to help the yard will be appreciated. The Easter Bunny is very pro-lawn care. There is an egg dye issue with Leta’s pants.
Monday: Snow storm. Disgusting. Heather and I are working in the newly clean basement when we hear this crazy gurgle coming from the shower drain. I immediately go and flush the toilet to make sure the drains are clean. It won’t drain. I plunge it. I hear noises in the shower drain and sink. Shit. Shit.
Shit.
I then decide to call the city. Maybe it really is the wet spring. They send out a sewer guy. He’s here in fifteen minutes. Broadband providers could learn a few things about service from the sewer people. Easy. It’s a related industry.
Today: Feeling a little better. Weather breaking a bit. Leta’s being really awesome and funny and jokey and starting to draw 6’s. With gusto. The day unravels when I notice that the toilet in the basement won’t drain after I flush it. It wasn’t even poop. I promise. Same gurgly noise. Same terror-stricken red flags popping up in my head. Trying not to think about root canal scheduled for 4:00 pm.
3:12 pm: Call one rooter service. They won’t quote a price on clearing the drain. Schedule them post-root canal. Decide to get opinion of plumber that helped us with the kitchen. Call. He doesn’t do rooting of any kind. But he has a guy.
3:16 pm: Call the guy. He says he can be out in about twenty minutes. He also gives me a basic quote and tells me that 90% of jobs are done in an hour or less. And that 80% of his business is in the older parts of town. Where we live. I have a twinge at this point. Kind of like a character in The Shining.
3:39 pm: Dude arrives. Gives me the lowdown. Tells me it might be roots. Before I moved to San Francisco in 1998, I rented a duplex in an older part of town that had to be cabled, so I know what that’s about.
3:53 pm: I’m in the car trying to make my dentists appointment on time. Not gonna happen.
4:12 pm: Arrive at dentist. Wait a few minutes, consult. Put on iPod to drown out the anxiety and noise. Turn it back down 28 seconds later to talk to the dentist. Walk out root canal-free with a couple of prescriptions for an anti-inflammatory and a decongestant. Sweet.
4:40 pm: Call Heather to let her know I’m going to try to fill the prescriptions before I come home. She mentions that the guy might have to work overtime/call in reinforcements. Since it’s only been an hour, I’m not too worried. I tell her I’ll be home in a bit.
4:58 pm: Realize I’ve forgotten my wallet as i walk into the store. I left it home. Before I left for the dentist. Brain power, people. BRAIN power.
5:03 pm: Ask the pharmacist to quote me on the meds, even though I’ve forgotten my wallet. Not too bad.
5:16 pm: Arrive home. Greeted with nasty sewage smell. Go downstairs and see some nasty… stuff. Not shit, actually, just bad things coming out of the drain. Dude is telling me it’s going to take awhile. He hasn’t seen it this bad in a few jobs.
5:35 pm: Fill prescriptions.
5:54 pm: Arrive home, check in with the guy. Not looking good.
6:00 pm - 7:43 pm: Chaos. Dinner, friends stopping in, girls screaming, heavy machinery operating in basement. Leta goes to bed without a bath.
7:58 pm: Reinforcements arrive. Dude has a trailer with a lot of hose. Hose not initially used. Just this crazy attachment called “The Whip”.
8:32 pm: They ran the cable, with The Whip, to the street. Still no drain action. Time for the hose. It’s referred to as jetting it out. One guy on roof, one guy running the pump, me monitoring the basement. I’m watching the shower drain and toilet to make sure it doesn’t flood.
It floods. A little bit.
Diagnosis: There is a huge fan somewhere between our house and the street. The sewer line has likely “bellied”. In probably several places. Which is why the cable and Whip could get to the street, but the water wouldn’t drain. And the several thousand PSI water line that couldn’t clear the drains.
They have to come back tomorrow and dig. Both the guys were very somber when they told us we were looking at a worse case scenario.
Here’s what our downstairs bathroom looks like:
WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES OF SHIT-LIKE SUBSTANCE (Heather wants everyone to know that it’s not actually what it looks like or what you think it is. It’s sludge… soil and debris. Dirt from the damaged line. Honest.). DO NOT CLICK LINKS IF YOU ARE OF WEAK CONSTITUTION.
It’s not going to be cheap.
UPDATE: Heather is crying. o
April 20th, 2006 at 6:42 am
I totally sympathize. Our plumbing repair last weekend cost me about one month’s pay. So, yeah, it sucks.
April 20th, 2006 at 7:55 am
Clearly our house heard all this discussion and decided it would rebel yesterday. Our water heater has died. The hubby and I have been washing in cold water (although I am so going to shower at the gym tonight) When will the people be able to come out to give us a water heater? Monday. Monday. (sigh)
That’s what I get for mocking the housing gods.
April 20th, 2006 at 9:31 am
Ugh sounds like you have a hell of a weekend! Sorry to hear about the tooth and the huge problems with the drains. It’s awful whe you can’t poo in our own home.
I can sympathise, a similar thing happened at a studio where I once worked as a toliet had been illegally plumbed into a storm drain. One day after a particularily rainy week, torrents of vile liquid came flooding out of the toilet at such a force it looked like something out of The Exorcist! We had to run like crazy to hoist the animation cells out of the way of the deluge. Flooded half the studio. Pooh!
April 20th, 2006 at 10:22 am
wow, jon…i feel your pain (literally). I had the prep work done for a crown last wednesday and my jaw (and my tooth, occasionally, but I’ve managed to dull that with Tylenol) STILL hurts. What someone said up there about referred pain: all true. I also managed to get some lovely little ulcers.
The pain is wearing off, though…maybe yours will too? Sending “no root canal” thoughts….
Root canal and Roto-Rooter in the same day: waah!
April 20th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
A sucky situation indeed, I hope it’s going better now. And just why is it that stuff like this gangs up like it does? Dealing with this and dental pain at the same time, damn that’s cruel.
We too had drainage issues. The city folks were amazingly prompt and because the roots were on city property, by maybe 4cm, we didn’t have to pay. I have a suspicion though, that my SO giving the drainage guys coffee and cookies might have had something to do with exactly where the roots were located.
April 20th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
In case no one else suggested this, you might check with your cities’ public works department to see if any part of the replacement/repair is covered by them. Where I live, they have this thing called Lateral Insurance Program to assist with the costs of these types of things - I think they covered 80% of our costs for the lateral replacement and this was like 50 feet from the street. It was a savings account saver, I tell you what.
April 20th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
Man that looks nasty. Can’t be easy having drainage problems of that degree (crosses fingers that we don’t have any at any point…). Good to know that the guys came out that quickly…you’d be lucky getting a plumber in the UK to come out the same day never mind in 15 minutes…
Good luck with it, hope it gets fixed soon! (Then at least you’ll have a new sewer line for the next couple of decades!??)
April 20th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Hang in there, guys. Although it probably doesn’t feel like it right now, you WILL make it through this.
Last fall we had an automobile accident, which was our fault, one month after we cancelled everything but our liability auto insurance.
Then the next week we went in to get my husband new glasses because one of his eyes was “fuzzy”, and we were immediately sent from the optometrist’s office to the hospital because he had a detached retina and was going blind.
Life is a very scary trip.
But hopefully this will make you smile.
http://decider.cf.huffingtonpost.com/
April 20th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Reminds me of the pictures I have; my husband and his oldest friend were going to school in Provo. They had a really big back up of REAL sewage in their tub and toilet. Like, a tub full. My husband bet his friend $50 that he wouldn’t put his head in the sewage and blog bubbles. He did. I have the pictures to prove it. Another one of those “old houses”.
April 20th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
I feel your pain. Not to long ago, our basement flooded, except in our case, there it was…poo…just hanging around like it was supposed to be there, floating on a thin layer of sewer water on my basement floor. I try not to take for granted the fact that 99% of the time, I don’t have to see what goes down my drain ever again.
April 20th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Holy Mother of GOD. I would be crying too. It’s a nightmare. Ya’ll definitely need a break, a miracle something. I am starting to have tremors about what a mess that is.
April 20th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Drain problems make me cringe. 2 months after I bought my house I had to have the driveway and half the front yard dug up to replace the sewer and storm water clay pipes that were too blocked with roots to allow the eel (root clearing thing) through. I still wonder what was going through the original owners mind when they planted pine trees on top of the lines.
my sympathies are with you. on the up side.. pipe replacement is a good reason to re-landscape.
April 20th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
Yuck! That sucks.
That was an annual event at my previous house. It was always roots from the two huge trees in my front yard. After about five years we finally had to dig and replace the drain line. 40 year old house.
Now I live in a 130 year old house, with even bigger trees. No drain problems. Go figure.
April 20th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
you see this is what I don’t get. Why, when one part of our lives turns to shit (sorry) all the other parts feel so sorry for it they turn to shit too. I just don’t get it. Why can’t the tooth say, “wow, these guys are getting hit hard on the $$$ at the mo, I’ll just settle down for a couple of months” or the car, that has kicked along quite nicely thank you, decides “hey, the basements flooding, I might just stop working too!”
Suckville.
April 20th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
My top 10 list of bad would include plumbing problems, human waste within range of my senses and dental pain - to have them all at the same time is the type of hell I hope one finds only in Utah.
April 20th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
Yeah, that definitely sucks…
On the plus side, I can now read and comment on your blogs using my boyfriend’s brand spankin new MacBook Pro (insert close to orgasmic sighing sound in here….). And for me the best part about that is I got to see Chuck with the Ice Cream bucket on his head and just finished laughing my ass off at the rolling over trick. LOVE IT!!!!
Take care Armstrongs!
April 21st, 2006 at 9:25 am
I can really relate to your troubles. Some years ago when I was living the true bachelor life(I lived with four single females in a five bedroom “rustic” house. Being the only male in the house I was never surprised to get a ring on my cell phone from a frantic roomie that couldn’t seem to figure out how to fix something. Or so I thought I would never be surprised. One day when I was at work I recieved a call from all four frantic roomates screaming that our basement was “flooding”. Interestingly enough, the basement was watertight. It never leaked once! Well I hurried home because I was worried about the exposed wiring in the basement combining with the electricity to cause a much larger problem. When I got there i found six inches of “rain water” as the city called it. In the center of our basement was a three inch drain spout that allowed for any time water was spilled in the basement. Theoritically it would just dump that water into the cities sewer system. Apparently if it rains a lot this sewage pipe backs up into our basement. Rain water my arse. I actually saw things floating in that water. The only upside was that it was in the winter and the stench was kept minimal. Also we were put up in a hotel for the three days it took to pump out our basement. As a result our landlord had that drain pipe disconnected.
April 21st, 2006 at 12:27 pm
I’m glad that the haters are quiet right now because if there was ever a scenario that justified the revenue generating initiatives of the blurbodoocery it would be this one.
this is what’s called Real Life. I hope your diligent work and planning and general good karma bring about a good outcome.
April 21st, 2006 at 2:08 pm
Root canals.
Sewage.
It’s like the Perfect Storm.
April 21st, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Dude, that shit-like substance in the pictures is shit, that’s what “sludge” is. There might be dirt mixed in but it’s still shit. Plumbers and sewer people call it sludge so we’ll feel better. I once went on a girls’ weekend to Vieques, Puerto Rico, where we (I) managed to stop up the toilets with tampons. The plumber’s solution was to TAKE THE TOILETS AWAY. He said we could shit at the hotel up the road, but it was like two miles away so we ended up shitting in the yard like dogs. It’s times like those that reveal how much we take for granted…
April 24th, 2006 at 8:14 am
Weak. I guess you can always consider it an investment. If you decide to sell the house you can say “It’s got a remodeled kitchen and a new sewer line!”
April 26th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
so i know it’s not funny, because i know this situation is really NOT funny, but i can’t help but laugh! and i’m allowed to laugh because i had to go through something similar. except, i’m not married, i live with my 2 sisters, we have never been home owners before and we are REALLY really girly. so we came home to what looked sort of like your pictures, but worse. it was like shit exploded in the worst possible way. it was all over the floors, all in the shower, on the walls!!and seeped out of the bathroom into the carpeted room that it was connected to. i know it’s not shit, but it sure damn looks like it and it’s coming out of the toilet! how can you not have that association? anyways, we ran a cable through and the poor guy found the most disgusting stuff. he went to my sister and showed her this huge brown blob the size of his entire hand. do you know what it was? no, DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT WAS? it was a tampon that had expanded! so so disgusting. i am forever traumatized and am sort of harboring a bit of resentment for owning a home. and, i can’t help it - now that the bathroom is clean, the carpet is shampooed, i still call the room the “poo room” and i don’t think i can ever let one go.
April 27th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
When I was in 6th grade, we were having a Halloween party. It was raining. Hard. All of a sudden, the bathroom toilet began to gurgle. Next thing we know it started backing up. The entrie neigborhood’s sewer system backed up into my parents 3000sqft home.
The city said it was my parents fault for “buying a corner lot”.
It’s happened 5 times since then. I hate that house.