Water, Water everywhere

In early December our main drain began backing up, depositing sewage into our basement. It would slowly drain back out. I tried various things to resolve the problem, to limited success, but ultimately we needed to call a plumber. Serendipitously, we received an unsolicited advertisement from a drain cleaning company on our door one day, so I called them. They snaked the main drain and pulled up a lot of roots. We ran a lot of water from the washing machine down the drain with no backup, so I assumed all was fixed.

Last week, the drain started backing up again. I called Rescue Rooter, hoping for a quick fix. They informed me of their pricing ($200 for the first hour, $90 each additional half hour) and my heart began to sink. Thankfully, they review the situation and offer an estimate before beginning any work. Even better, the fellow who did come out was very helpful, and told me to call back the first folks who worked on the drain before spending any money with his company. (This is a marked departure from when I called Roto Rooter some years back, and the repairman offered to come back on his own time to work on my problem in exchange for a cash payment directly to him.) I had indeed tried to call the first company back prior to calling Rescue Rooter, but got no answer.

After some phone tag, we finally coordinated for the first company to come back the next day. In a fortuitous turn of events, Carina had some months prior met the former occupants of this house, so we were able to ask them for some history of the plumbing. This proved very helpful, and the drain guy was able to use this information to run another snake via an outside access pipe that had been installed by the previous owners. More roots were removed, and the drain began working as normal, again.

Now the only plumbing problem we have is a very slow drain in the upstairs bathroom sink. I’ve been meaning to buy a small auger for this for some time, but it’s never been enough of a problem to really motivate me to action.

This morning I woke up with a slight headache, and ambled downstairs to prepare some coffee. As I walked past the Christmas tree in our living room, I heard a weird, repeating sound. It sounded like two ornaments gently clinking against one another. Curious, I looked for the ornaments, hoping I could separate them so that they wouldn’t exacerbate my headache. I couldn’t find any two ornaments clinking together… but wait, why was the floor wet? Come to think of it, why was the tree wet?

It turns out that one of the twins had used the upstairs sink during the night, and left it on ever so slightly. The water dripped all night long, slowly filling the pipe, then the sink basin, and finally running over onto the floor. Left unattended for hours, the water seeped through the floor and came out the ceiling of our living room. It didn’t stop there, though! It leaked on through to the basement.

Happy f’ing New Year.