Homeowner's Blues.
So, Monday morning I noticed the shower draining slowly. The wife had already been aware of this, I was just late in catching on, myself. Poured drain cleaner down the plug, thought myself clever that it seemed to drain just fine when I rechecked an hour later, found myself to be naive when it backed up again Tuesday morning.
The toilet glugged right when the water backed up in the shower (ew?), and when I flushed it to double check, it too failed to drain.
So the clog was somewhere beyond either tub or toilet. Plunging the toilet at this point was worse than useless, since it somehow caused a break or at least demonstrated that a weak part of the wax seal underneath the seat had broken, whatever, water leaked out around the sides.
Sent email to work that I'd be out for the day, bought a 25' snake and some misc. shower bits (the tub/shower diverter needed work, anyhow), and a new wax seal - one way or another, that toilet had to be dismantled and resealed.
Worked the snake from the roof vent, nothing really noteable came back up after two passes, so headed back inside. Fed it through the tub overflow drain, couldn't get past the trap. Took apart the toilet, fed the snake down the full 25' in the 4" pipe I had exposed, and still nothing serious. A little black much the first pass, and nothing after that (I then soaked the snake in bleach water for a bit, just to make it nice nice for future use).
Admitting defeat around 2pm, I called the local plumber (we have local business cards of note taped on the kitchen wall), was told no one was available until after Emergency Hours were in effect, raising the cost to $158/hr. !! Well, it had to be done, so fine.
After the better part of the day, I finally headed out to the local library to use their facilities (and to discover that, sadly, Ayn Rand's Anthem was NOS). My browsing was disrupted by Dopher calling to tell me the plumber had arrived.
He was up on my ladder (still hadn't taken it down from earlier), his power auger went down the toilet drain and unexpectedly went back UP the vent! With me watching up top, he retracted and then re-fed that snake with the same result.
I offered up the pipes in the acces space under the house, but we only moved to that after another 1/2 hour + trying to get it to work via a small access point outside the kitchen - no dice there, either, the snake was binding just before entering the 4" main.
Finally, after more than an hour of failed attempts to even get started routing out the pipes, we finally got the operation moved under the house, where he had to heat the pipe with a torch to get a plug opened up and finally started the cleaning process.
In the end, it turned out there were roots invading the cast iron pipes that went not forward to the street, but under my back yard. He could only get a 2" blade down, the way we had to access the pipes, so I need to prepare the pipes to get a cleaning plug added in a more accessible location - hundreds of dollars more I need to spend in the near future.
So, a 2" hole is now cleared in the 4" pipe, it's just a matter of time before I need to get this properly resolved.
Time? I must have looked crosseyed at his "4:30 PM" start time, because he clarified without my asking - "We start from the time I head out on the call". So, yeah, I paid for him to get here, try and fail for a long while, got a good 40 minutes of what I actually called him in for, and then, to top it all off, it turns out they tack on an extra 30 minutes for his return trip.
Return trip? Was I, as the last call of the day, special in that I get to pay for him to drive home? Or, perhaps worse still, does everyone get charged a half hour return trip? If that is the case, the customer before me paid for 30 minutes of his drive to my place, and I paid for however long it took, as well - double payments for the same time!?! I didn't think of that until later on, so friggin agg.
$427.50 bought me a little time.
Let's see how far that lasts me.
On a lighter note, I find myself wanting a Wii.
I don't know why, I have a perfectly good xbox I never get around to playing, but for some reason... it seems like a fun toy.
The toilet glugged right when the water backed up in the shower (ew?), and when I flushed it to double check, it too failed to drain.
So the clog was somewhere beyond either tub or toilet. Plunging the toilet at this point was worse than useless, since it somehow caused a break or at least demonstrated that a weak part of the wax seal underneath the seat had broken, whatever, water leaked out around the sides.
Sent email to work that I'd be out for the day, bought a 25' snake and some misc. shower bits (the tub/shower diverter needed work, anyhow), and a new wax seal - one way or another, that toilet had to be dismantled and resealed.
Worked the snake from the roof vent, nothing really noteable came back up after two passes, so headed back inside. Fed it through the tub overflow drain, couldn't get past the trap. Took apart the toilet, fed the snake down the full 25' in the 4" pipe I had exposed, and still nothing serious. A little black much the first pass, and nothing after that (I then soaked the snake in bleach water for a bit, just to make it nice nice for future use).
Admitting defeat around 2pm, I called the local plumber (we have local business cards of note taped on the kitchen wall), was told no one was available until after Emergency Hours were in effect, raising the cost to $158/hr. !! Well, it had to be done, so fine.
After the better part of the day, I finally headed out to the local library to use their facilities (and to discover that, sadly, Ayn Rand's Anthem was NOS). My browsing was disrupted by Dopher calling to tell me the plumber had arrived.
He was up on my ladder (still hadn't taken it down from earlier), his power auger went down the toilet drain and unexpectedly went back UP the vent! With me watching up top, he retracted and then re-fed that snake with the same result.
I offered up the pipes in the acces space under the house, but we only moved to that after another 1/2 hour + trying to get it to work via a small access point outside the kitchen - no dice there, either, the snake was binding just before entering the 4" main.
Finally, after more than an hour of failed attempts to even get started routing out the pipes, we finally got the operation moved under the house, where he had to heat the pipe with a torch to get a plug opened up and finally started the cleaning process.
In the end, it turned out there were roots invading the cast iron pipes that went not forward to the street, but under my back yard. He could only get a 2" blade down, the way we had to access the pipes, so I need to prepare the pipes to get a cleaning plug added in a more accessible location - hundreds of dollars more I need to spend in the near future.
So, a 2" hole is now cleared in the 4" pipe, it's just a matter of time before I need to get this properly resolved.
Time? I must have looked crosseyed at his "4:30 PM" start time, because he clarified without my asking - "We start from the time I head out on the call". So, yeah, I paid for him to get here, try and fail for a long while, got a good 40 minutes of what I actually called him in for, and then, to top it all off, it turns out they tack on an extra 30 minutes for his return trip.
Return trip? Was I, as the last call of the day, special in that I get to pay for him to drive home? Or, perhaps worse still, does everyone get charged a half hour return trip? If that is the case, the customer before me paid for 30 minutes of his drive to my place, and I paid for however long it took, as well - double payments for the same time!?! I didn't think of that until later on, so friggin agg.
$427.50 bought me a little time.
Let's see how far that lasts me.
On a lighter note, I find myself wanting a Wii.
I don't know why, I have a perfectly good xbox I never get around to playing, but for some reason... it seems like a fun toy.