Good Morning All, I am James, aka "exlrrp." This is the Saturday Morning Home Repair Blog, where the Dailykos community comes together to discuss home repair, construction and remodeling. We have a dedicated group of home repair professionals and amateurs with varied backgrounds that drops by to share in the discussion. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have or discuss any project you may have going on or may be comtemplating.
ACK!
Todays home problem for the humble undersigned is that most yuckiest of all home problems---plugged house drain. There's a stoppage somewhere in the middle of the sewer drain line that runs from the house to the septic tank. This is the first time THIS has happened in my somewhat problematic house.
This was brought to my attention Thursday when Mrs exlrrp pointed out that yucky water was backing up and leaking out a vent that comes up near the driveway slab. Closer inspection indicated a blockage.
Now, there's two important things to remember when cleaning sewer drains: watery stuff won't flow uphill and never chew your fingernails.
I did what I could with a little 25' snake I have but I could see it was going to take more than that. After decades of a career in contracting, the now retired exlrrp believes in calling in the experts, especially if it looks like it's going to be REALLY yucky work and this looked like the yuckiest.(hope the language isn't too technical here )
So it's Ho! for the phonebook to get someone up here to take care of it. When looking for help in the phone book, I never really know what to choose----the company with the big ad because theyre the biggest or the one with the small ad because theyre the cheapest. I went with the big ad, an offshoot of Rotor-Rooter, the rooter thats too big to fail,supposedly.I also asked to have our septic tank pumped, tho I had this done 4 years ago and it wasn't really necessary.
Well, to make a long story shorter, the guy who came out on Friday didn't have enough snake to do it or the snake he brought wouldn't do it, anyway. It's a 100'line and all he had was a 75'snake. He put it up from both ends but couldn't dislodge whatever it is. I'll give him an A for effort--he spent almost 2 hrs trying, then phoned a picture of the situation
to his boss. The boss said they'll send out the "jetter," the big gun, tommorrow (which is now today) so I'll have to bail on this conversation at around 9:00 AM (PST) or whenever they get here.
I sure hope this will do it. The blockage seems to be in an area where we took out 2 major trees in '08 so I'm hoping against hope that its not a root blockage or something major. It looks like a major problem to dig this up, right across the driveway, part of which is a concrete slab.
So, tell me all your problems while I'm waiting