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The weekend was pretty bad in more ways than one.
Friday B&B informs me that the downstairs shower is backing up with something. When either of the toilets are flushed water (and some other stuff) is backing up into the shower. Fortunately, it was contained pretty much in the shower, and it wasn't raw sewage. Well, off to Canadian Tire on Saturday morning to get two big bottles of draino.
Two bottles of draino later, still clogged. It's gotta be the mainline. Time to call a professional. Buddy can dispatch someone right away. Great. Buddy phones back and says the van has broke down, so he can't get to me until first thing in the morning, or I can call someone else. Well, at that time it was more inconvenience than a real PITA mess. I guess tomorrow will have to do. So, no more flushing of the toilets unless absolutely necessary. Well, if you live with a sewage tank, that's probably normal operations, but for us city folk, it takes real thought not to just flush.
Sunday morning comes (I knew it would). Buddy shows up right at 9:00 just as promised. He takes a look and is a little baffled why it is coming into the shower and not out of the laundry room drain. He wants to know where the mainline entry is...What? I don't have a clue. We look around the basement a bit and found it, quite by accident in my son's room. I kinda stepped in a puddle. I did have shoes on. After cutting away the flooring Buddy is shaking his head. He tells me that whoever built the room has cemented the access points to the mainline so we have to break the flooring.
Knock yourself out. He tells me the access points should be above the floor for this very situation. Since he didn't want to break up the floor anymore than necessary, he decided to try to gain access via the laundry drain. Oh, and by the way, when you do decide to fix the access point it will be about 4-5 hundred dollars. Yikes!!.
Off to his van he goes and brings in this big snake thingy (I thought I'd put that into real layman terms for everyone). He starts it up and goes about 15 ft. of length. He decides to flush the toilet. Well, low and behold, whatever was stopping the mess from coming up the laundry drain was now cleared because a whole slew of brown sludge starts coming up the drain. I have to move fast to save my beer the various things laying on the laundry room floor that really shouldn't have that kind of mess on it. Saved everything! Surprisingly enough it didn't smell. Buddy called it "toilet paper mash". He proceeds to go another 10 feet or so with the snake and flushes again. This time everything was fine.
Relief?
Not really. After cleaning up and running tons of water and flushing several times, he leaves with over $200 dollars of my money. B&B can now do laundry and we can all get back to our normal practices of lavatory use. Before he leaves however, he explains to me what needs to be done with the mainline entry point in the bedroom. I'm nodding my head as he's saying "You just need to blah blah. And then just blah blah and blah. Then blah blah and you're done. Simple." Sure it is for a plumber and cement guy - not for me. However, for 4-500 dollars in savings, I'll give it a whirl...in July.
Later that afternoon, I hear a small yelp coming from the laundry room. It's B&B announcing we have a problem, only this time it is a very smelly problem. To make this already long story shorter, we get them back out to the house and they run the snake a little further and everything seems fine once again.
Then I settle in to watch the Leafs. They come up with their worst effort of the playoffs losing 7-2 (a stinker just like the rest of my weekend!). There is very little to be happy about with that effort, so I won't even pretend. After playing two terrific games in Toronto, the Leafs lay an egg back in Philadelphia. Next game is win or go golfing.
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