Perhaps We Should Fall Back & Regroup

That's what we're doing right now. Taking a breather at the Powell's house. ~Aaaaaahhhhh~ It feels nice, though we'll only be here for this evening and tomorrow. It's just nice to come to a house that has furniture and a refrigerator, a washer--things like that--every so often.

So... our water problems:

About three weeks ago the basement toilet started overflowing all over the floor--this seemed to happen in conjunction with finishing the master bathroom--when we began using larger amounts of water (showering) there. Because things were backing up, we thought perhaps the septic tank needed pumped. We paid to have that done. It was a good thing to do anyway, but it didn't cure our problem. James then poured some emergency care stuff down the pipes hoping it would eat away whatever blockage was causing things to back up through the toilet down there. Nope, didn't work. So then we tried Roto Rooter--the main line from the house to the tank must be clogged. Didn't work. In fact, from the moment the Roto Rooter dude ran the snaky metal thing down the pipe things got way, way worse. Now we couldn't flush toilets or wash hands (much less paint brushes) without the basement toilet spilling out and spreading all over the place. That was a week ago. Things still overflowed even when we weren't using water, baffling us to no end. We left Sunday night to go back to Brierfield, turning the main water line to the house OFF at the Monstrosity before we left. When we got back Tuesday evening, IT HAD OVERFLOWED AGAIN!!! What???? How is that possible and where is this water coming from????? We cleaned up all of the mess AGAIN (we are sooooooo tired of mopping that floor!), stayed at Sister Fender's house that night, then went back to the Monstrosity the next day to mop up the perpetual puddle made by the magic toilet--and it wasn't there! For the first time in a week the toiled had NOT overflowed. I wanted to be excited about it, but it still didn't explain WHY it was doing it before, so we knew it wasn't fixed.

Thursday morning we got a plumber out to look at it. He felt certain that the pipe from the house to the tank must be clogged, completely confident that it's the only thing it COULD be. It felt reassuring to have someone who felt confident about something for a change! (Up until this point we just kept getting more and more confused!) It made sense that it would cause the toilet to overflow (it's the lowest spot in the house, of course), but still didn't explain where all of the water was coming from--even when the water to the house was turned off! Mr. Plumber (I should learn his name--I have a feeling we'll be good friends with him for as long as we live in this house; we've seen him twice in the past week) said that there could be as much as 60-80 GALLONS of water still in the pipes throughout the house after the water is shut off! I had noooooo idea there could be that much! That would explain where the water was coming from (and also allows me to know just how much we've been mopping for the past week--especially since it was that much just SINCE we turned the water off) and why it finally stopped overflowing... after two or three days it had finally oozed all 60-80 gallons all over the floor and run dry.

ANYWAY, he tried to do the Roto Rooter thing again (he has the same machine), but to no avail. He told us that the line was full of sludge and when they pull the snaky metal thing back out the sludge would just close up around it, clogging things up again. He said we needed to call Roto Rooter back and have them bring out a "jetter"--a machine that blows 4,000 lbs. of pressure and blasts the sludge out the other end. So that's what we did. Why didn't the plumber warn me how much it costs to do such a thing???? *OUCH* But we didn't feel we had any option--and it was still much cheaper than if we would have had to replace the septic tank and redo the leach field or something like that, so we're definitely counting our blessings.

We went to the new Chinese restaurant for lunch and my fortune cookie said, "You will have no problems in your home." Hahahahahahahaha! Best one I've ever gotten! Feeling encouraged (ha!), we called Roto Rooter again and asked them to send a jetter out.

It is an amazing thing, the jetter. A $60,000 machine that can blow sludge--thick, black, oozy, smelly, slimy sludge--out of a pipe when nothing else can make a dent. Actually if you made a dent in sludge it just fills back in, so dents don't help anyway. At the end of the day:




Meet Mike! He's the answer to our prayers. The man who God sent to finally--at long last!--solve our water-pouring-out-of-the-basement-toilet-ALL-THE-TIME dilemma. Yes. I did ask a total stranger if I could have my picture taken with him. Yes. It is weird. But it's not often that a Roto Rooter man gets to feel like a celebrity or have somebody appreciate his work so much they ask for a picture--I probably made his day. Hahahaha! Yes, I'm holding my "You will have no problems in your home" fortune, too. And yes, I did explain to the man that I don't believe in fortunes, I believe in prayer--I just found it funny and ironic that I should get such a "fortune" on that very day. HA!

So now we are THANKING THE LORD that this particular problem seems to have been solved. I went upstairs and started flushing toilets and running faucets all over the place before Mike left, just to be sure. Noooooooooo water came up in the toilet at all. PRAISE THE LORD!!! It's amazing how much you appreciate things (like being able to use sinks, toilets and tubs in your own house) when you go without them for a week or two. The kids were ECSTATIC at the news. They STILL ask us each time though, "Is this toilet usable???" just to be sure. Ha!