Awhile back, I mentioned that we had a pretty bad Saturday that culminated in erupting sewage in our house.  There is more to the story of course and you dear friends, are always so patient to listen to my ramblings…

So we finished our ’round-the-clock pumping and called the plumbers.  They immediately told us that our city sanitary board offers a free service where they will run a camera through the system to identify the location of the problem.  In fact, a simple clog will sometimes break free when their camera passes so we were pleased with the possibility.  The city came and did their thing…after they finally found a spot that the could even access the system.  You see, in our old house, there are essentially no viable clean-outs they could use.  Luckily they were able to access the system through the floor drain that was the original source of our problems.  After some work, they identified a spot 44′ out into the yard that was the problem…it just went black on the camera.

We called our plumbers back and they began the task of roto-rooting the system.  Of course, without a clean-out, they had problems.   The only option for their bigger tool was to remove one of our toilets and go through the system that way.  Luckily we have 3 bathrooms so we weren’t immediately doomed.  The problem, however, was that they got their tool stuck in the system somewhere 80′ or so in from the entry point.

The only solution was to excavate to retrieve their tool.  I figured that since they were going to have to excavate, we might as well replace the old clay tile pipe with new pvc and hopefully avert future crises.  So, with a huge tool still stuck in our bathroom and plugging a large part of our drain system, we entered day 3…or was it day 4?  Who knows?  Anyhow, the excavator came and dug up a large part of our yard, including the water line which was apparently buried on top of the sewer line.  Yeah!  More problems and expense!  Yeah!   #+@#$*!  It turns out the line was full of roots from the house clear to the city’s tap.  The city had to replace their tap and a section of their line as well…luckily that won’t immediately cost me.

Everything eventually got put back together and reburied.  We flushed and flushed to make sure it all rolled downhill as…stuff…is meant to do.  There is nothing left in our basement so it seems that all is well once again in our little piece of Heaven!