One Bad DayIt started yesterday morning, Wednesday, when I decided not to take a shower. My last shower was the morning before and I was in a rush. My day at the office is intense as usual, but I make it through the day and get home. Now on Wednesdays, my wife works the evening shift so she doesn't get home until 9pm. So I relaxed for a while, watched a movie and then set to clean up the house a bit. My final job was washing the dishes when she came home. Her day was fast paced as usual, dealing with many elementary school kids, and all she wanted was a shower, so she heads to the bathroom. The next thing I hear is her yelling. I went to the bathroom to see it in total shambles. The sewer had backed up causing the toilet bowl to overflow and 2 inches deep standing grey water in the bathtub. The little bathroom rugs were absolutely engorged with this grey water and there still was a puddle on the bathroom floor. Now lucky for me I bought a 6HP 16Gal Sears Craftsman shop vac about 6 months ago. This happened once before and it was all taken care of by the shop vac, so this should just be a little bump in what was usually a nice evening. You run into these kind of things when you live in a house that was built in 1952. I got the 6HP 16Gal Sears Craftsman shop vac out and sucked up all the water on the floor and out of the rugs then sucked all the water out of the bathtub. After getting all that cleaned up the next step was to suck the drain of the bathtub. This would pull the cloggage to the bathtub drain where I can yank it out with needle-nosed pliers. And of course that is exactly what happened. There was fine tree roots mixed in with some of my wife's hair. I pulled all that junk out with my pliers and then turned on the bathtub faucet to wash everything down. Well it backed up again. But that isn't a problem, I probably missed some more of those roots. I took my trusty 6HP 16Gal Sears Craftsman shop vac again and started sucking on that drain. I could feel pulses of water go up the pipe so I knew I was getting stuff out of the line. Then the smell came. I was sucking up sewer air and blowing it into the house! Quickly we opened all the windows and then my wife retreated to the bedroom. That's ok because this is a man's job with my man tools. Men don't care about smell. It's a battle that the man is guaranteed to win. So I was having fun. I looked into the bathtub drain only to find that there was no junk to pull out with my pliers. OK, nothing blocking, let's try flushing the toilet. I flush and the bathtub starts backing up again and this is grey and brown nasty water. Crap! Still clogged; time to fight with chemical warfare. I sucked out the new standing water in the bathtub taking care NOT to suck from the drain. Then I had to empty my 6HP 16Gal Sears Craftsman shop vac. Rolling a shop vac full of 16 gallons of grey and brown water through your house isn't easy. I finally got it into the backyard and dumped it. I decided that I should mop the floor before I go any further so that I do not track anything from the bathroom into the rest of the house. So I put a healthy amount of Pine Sol in a bucket in my garage and fill it with scalding hot water. Then I grab the mop and head to the bathroom. The mop is one of those sponge types and it doesn't fit in the bucket! But if I put it in at an angle I can dip half of it. So I mop the floor. Then I retreated to the garage to search for my chemical weapon, Concentrated Plummer's Industrial Strength Sulfuric Acid, that my wife purchased. This stuff is guaranteed to eat away any hair, roots, or other biological material that gets in the way. There are HUGE, red skull and crossbones on the bottle and warnings against breathing the fumes and to be sure to wear a face shield when using. If this stuff is this powerful, its gotta work. I pour this thick black nastiness down the drain and it starts bubbling. That's how you tell that the acid is eating that crap away. The house began to smell of sulfur, rotten egg sort of smell, as the drain continued to bubble, but I already opened the windows. It said to wait for 15 minutes so I start reading and enjoying my evening once again. I went back to the bathroom and it wasn't bubbling anymore. The instructions say to flush your drain for 5 minutes to clear out all the acid. I decided to flush the toilet. And the water starts swirling in the bowl and running down the pipe but only long enough to tempt me to be joyful. It backs up once again and the water in the toilet bowl is now pushing the acid that I poured up into the bathtub! How am I going to get acid out of my bathtub? I don't want to suck that with my new 6HP 16Gal Sears Craftsman shop vac. I finally figured that since the acid was stored in a plastic bottle, my 6HP 16Gal Sears Craftsman shop vac could handle it. And just to make sure, I will suck up all the clean water in the toilet bowl to clean out the hose and to further dilute the acid in the tank. As I empty the black acid water from the bathtub I notice just how clean and shiny the drain is from all that acid. Well that is at least something to feel positive about. Then I suck a good 3 gallons from the toilet bowl and my 6HP 16Gal Sears Craftsman shop vac is full again. This time I got to hurry and dump this stuff before the tank gets eaten away while it is in the house and gushes acid all over the place. I make it outside and carefully find a place of bare ground (I am working on rejuvenating my lawn you know) and dump it there. Then spend the next 15 minutes spraying off my plastic shop vac and cleaning out the hose. As I walk back into the house my shoe is covered in dog crap! OK, now I am barefoot working in the bathroom (which is at least mopped). The bathtub is empty and I still have some of that acid stuff left. I pour the rest of this stuff down the bathtub drain and it really starts bubbling. I know I got it this time. I wait the prescribed 15 minutes and then carefully allow water to flow from the bathtub faucet and see what happens. To my disappointment the bathtub drain starts to rise with the water. I think I lost. I have one more hope and that is, if I let the acid soak over night, by the next morning it has got to be cleared away. So in the morning I went to the bathroom kinda excited and notice that I couldn't see any water in the bathtub drain. I turned on the faucet and it filled up again. That means that now I am on days 3 with out a shower! So I am at the point where I must call in the heavy artillery, the plumber. We are gonna hit this thing with some severe sewage tools and maybe some explosives or a back hoe. So I meet the guy at my house and show him the access pipe. This is a pipe at the surface of the ground that goes down about three feet and intersects the main sewage drain for your house. He gets from his truck one of those rooter machines. He plugs the thing in and shoves this claw like device, which is attached to the flexible cable that forces it to turn. Within minutes my drain is flowing free and there is peace once again in my bathroom. The only question is, with all the dirtiness on me from not showering for so long, will it clog again when I take a shower? |