Fun With Plumbing Part Deux

I'm back, and everything is clean and put away again. I decided to take off for a whole week and do some major spring cleaning. Last year I wasn't able to do it because of my back pain and other personal problems. I conquered one to two rooms each day. Then I rested and went on from there to the next room the next day. I could have done the whole house over one weekend but now it's just too much for me. I actually was able to attack the windows and window blinds this time, which if I had my way, I would have taken them outside and used the power washer on them. YES REALLY!! They hadn't been cleaned in years. They were so bad David thought about buying a new set. The worst ones were in the TV room. The puppies leave little nose prints all over them when looking out the windows for squirrels. But it's all done and the house is clean. I'm quite happy now.

David finally tackled that pipe problem and the water from the washroom pipes is draining quite nicely now. No more water in the kitchen sink or on the roof from the overflow. After he replaced the pipes coming from the washroom to the main drain he was at a total loss as to why the water kept backing up into my kitchen sink. The week before last he had poured two bottles of drain cleanout into the pipe from the cleanout that he had been playing with for the past three weekends. He waited for a few hours as the destructions on the label stated. Then he flushed the pipe with hot water from the washer. The water still came up into the kitchen sink He thought about it overnight and then took last week Thursday off and decided to snake the whole drain system. He started with the pipe above on the roof then worked on the pipe below the kitchen window. Nothing worked. Then he remembered when there was a nasty drain backup from the city that sent stinking water into the tub(after he got divorced and before he met me).

He had called the plumbers when that happened thinking the sewer pipe had collapsed. That call cost him $800 to put in a new cleanout in the front side of the house. The episode back in 2000 was a blessing in disguise because he went to that cleanout this past weekend and put the snake down the pipe as far as the snake would go, nothing came out. No gunk at all.

He was so pissed off that he came into the kitchen where I was cleaning out the pantry and slumped down into the breakfast barstool and started rambling about losing his mind. I was doing one laundry load and asked if it was okay to restart the washer and finish it. He said that I may as well he had to go call the plumber. I asked what he was doing all this time and he told me.

During that time the laundry water was emptying. But it wasn't making that gurgling sound in the kitchen sink. I walked over to the sink to watch for the water. Nothing. NOTHING was coming up into the sink! I screamed for David to come into the kitchen. He ran and saw what I saw. No gurgling, no water, no water sounds in the sink pipe, OMG!! We hugged each other and he ran out the front door to see if the water was coming through to the open cleanout he had been working on. The water was flowing smoothly. He was going crazy and shouting. He told me to refill the washer and set it to let the water out again. Nothing came up into the sink. He was screaming and dancing in the yard when I told him. I asked him what did he do? He couldn't tell me because he didn't know. He really didn't know what he had done to solve the problem. So we are at a total loss as to what it was, and what to do if the problem happens again.We did celebrate, though. He took me to our favorite steak place for a nice dinner. Yes Saltgrass!

Fun With Plumbing

 Let me tell you something, when you chance upon bad luck, that bitch stays with you all weekend and then some. Take for instance my husband, David. You see, David is not the best plumber in the U.S.of A. I have blogged about his adventures in plumbing before. Believe me, when I say that I have a 24-hour plumbing service on speed dial, just in case. When David embarks on a seek and find mission, he never stops. That's the bad luck.

Take for instance this past weekend and the weekend before. Yes, he started playing with water and the plumbing the weekend before. You see, we have a problem with a clogged pipe. It was somewhere between the overfill pipe that runs from the roof to the main house line. Really it's from the washroom pipe coming from the washer that empties to the main line. There is a feed out that is on the roof that is connected to that line. If something is clogging that little pipe from the washer to the main line, then the water from the washer will end up gushing out of that little pipe on the roof.

So, David decided he needed to cut the pipe from the far right of the beginning of the PVC(white pipe) to the first connector(the thick white piece after the thingy clean out sticking up from the white pipe). He set up a clean out right there( the white piece that will be sticking out of the ground when he ever finally covers all that shit up with dirt). Well, the water gushed out of the lower pipe(right side without the PVC on it) opening and not the roof, I don't remember how many times before he thought he solved it. Yes, he's that anal.

So then he says he fixed it and the pipe is back together again. The only problem was that when I tried to wash clothes on Monday the water was gushing out of the pipe on the roof again for all our neighbors to see. Hence, I had the phone in my hands talking to a plumber when David came home. He was not going to pay a plumber $700 to unclog a pipe. So this past weekend he got off Friday afternoon early and proceeded to fight the pipe clog again.

 This time, I told him to take the rest of the pipe off up to the first connection to the main pipe(on the far left). I said that is where you'll most likely find the clog because there's a bend in the pipe. He did and then put the cleanout brush through the connection pipe and everything flowed smoothly. So, he want back to Home Desperate and got another pipe connector and connected the PVC pipe piece to the smaller pipe he made and then back to the main pipe. Everything worked fine, except that now, water was coming up into the sink in the kitchen from the washer. WTF!! David did not snake the main pipe to make sure the clog was completely gone from our system and into the main city sewer pipe. So now, he will most likely take off again on Friday to tackle that job. *sigh*