What Happened Last Week

In the middle of my mid-week blitz to try and finish the swing set, Grandma happens to mention there’s a puddle in the floor of the basement.

What?

Since Jen had recently defrosted the freezer, I ask if the puddle is near the freezer.

“No.”

I put down my shovel and head in to look. Sure enough there’s a puddle at the other end in front of the water equipment (neutralizer & softener). It’s a puddle I’ve seen before. Granted it’s been a while, but familiar.

Directly above our water equipment is a trap the plumber put in when he reconfigured everything. It’s much like a trap you see in most houses with their laundry in the basement except those come out of the floor and ours is in the ceiling. Yes. The ceiling in our basement is the lowest point for waste water in our house.

Anyway the trap was installed to properly catch/drain the purge lines from the water equipment and the drain lines from our condensation pumps on the HVAC equipment. Previously each of those lines had been tapped directly into the waste water lines via hard connections. That was bad in the case of a septic clog. Waste water could potentially get pushed back into the purge lines, into the equipment and into our clean water supply.

Shortly after the trap and new purge line configuration was installed, it ran into issues. The purge lines are simply zip tied into the trap and tied in near the top. After a few weeks of purging, the lines shook themselves loose and crept out of the trap. At that point when they purged, the water (basically raw well water) went all over the floor and basement instead of in the trap.

This went on for a while before I finally figured out what was happening and pushed the purge lines way down inside (sort of defeating the traps waste water protection function) and tightened the zip ties. I also discovered the periodic spraying of the basement had caused the water heater thermostat to fail, because the purged water had collected in the wiring cavity in the top of the water heater and shorted it out.

As I said I fixed all that. Fixed it to the point I even felt confident to hang all our sleeping bags within close proximity of the water equipment.

When I went in that day and saw the puddle I immediately assumed that was the issue. Climbing up on the foot stool and seeing one of the lines wiggled back up near the top of the trap pretty much confirmed it for me. Disgusted I pushed the line back down the trap and called the plumber with a nasty complaint. They moved up my appointment for yearly water equipment service to August 15th and we agreed they’d readdress the trap then. Pushing the purge line back down should work till then.

I walked out to let things dry.

The next morning I had to go downstairs for something, when I noticed the floor and surrounding area looked wetter than the day before.

“What the?”

I looked closer trying to identify the source. The equipment only purges every third day or so, now I was bit confused as to what was happening.

Upon closer inspection I noticed little bits of white paper (toilet paper) clinging to the pipes, wires and walls.

“That’s not right.”

Then I remember Jen saying something about the toilet in our bathroom not flushing correctly. I went upstairs to confirm, then went back downstairs to run some tests. She ran the sink and the bathtub, which seemed to operate fine. When she tried to flush the toilet, water came splashing/spilling back out of the trap.

We had a clog or backup of some kind.

I first checked the septic tank. Our last cleaning was roughly 18 months ago. It should be fine, but checked anyway. There appeared to be about a foot clearance from the top of the tank. Maybe with all the water we’ve had it’s somehow backed up?

I called my Dad (who doesn’t believe in pumping septic tanks) for advice. He said check the line for a clog.

I got my little plumbers snake out and ran it through the trap. I got it in about 12 – 16 before it completely stopped. Too far for it to be effective, so I called the plumber.

First thing I did on the phone was apologize for being such an angry ass the day before, then begged for them to come out that day and fix it. They said someone would be out that afternoon.

Later I realized my snake stopped at the elbow in the wall to the outside. I was back to square one, but at least the plumber was coming to figure it out and hopefully fix it.

In the meantime I had to take a shower and get to work. Since the blockage only appeared to be a problem with high volume discharges, I strung up a 5 gallon bucket from the ceiling under the trap (just in case) and took a shower.

When I got out Grandma was there and the daily routine was on its way with one caution to not flush the toilets.

I went downstairs to check the bucket and found out it was full.

Damn!

As I climbed the foot stool to figure out how I was going to empty a full five gallon bucket hanging 8 ft in the air, Grandma ran the kitchen sink which splashed back out of the trap into the bucket and at my face and clothes.

Lovely.

So much for my shower.

So now the plumbing was off limits. No toilets. No Sinks. Wonderful.

Skip ahead a few hours to the plumbers showing up.

He writes up the estimate. It’s only $100 if his curb plunger fixes it. It’s $400 if they have to roll out the heavy duty powered drain snake.

They head out to the trap between the house and the septic. He plunges a bit, but doesn’t seem to get any flow. Out comes the heavy duty powered drain snake. Fire it up and auger away. It took about 30 minutes more of the drain snake and additional curb plunging before we got flow again. Some large clod of white stuff came out – probably grease and they were on their way.

Now the only question is how long before it happens again?

Meanwhile we’re washing and drying all the sleeping bags (all 9 of them) that got sprayed with grey water.

Yay.

– b