Toil and trouble....

*warning...this is mostly a complaining type post. If you'd like to skip it, feel free =) *

We thought we were doing pretty well with water conservation before, but now we've taken it to an entirely different level.  Well, not that we really meant to.

This past weekend Mandy called me to let me know that the toilets were "burping" after they were flushed.  Both of them...  And sure enough when I got home, we confirmed that we had a near complete blockage in the main sewage line (angina fecalis I guess would be the medical term).  Why is it that things like this always have to happen at the start of a three day weekend? And home warranty service does not respond until "regular business hours" i.e. at least monday if not tuesday.  I took this time to search for the elusive cleanout drain that we were told about before we bought the house, but after several hours of digging and about ten buckets of dirt, it was definitely not where the sewage scope guy had predicted it would be. Argh...

The plumber was able to make it out to our property yesterday and promptly told us that without a ground level cleanout, they couldn't do anything as their insurance does not allow them to go up on the roof and cleanout the pipe through a roof vent.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, the other part of our plumbing problem is that on Monday after doing some dishes in the sink, the water I drained started coming out from around the base of the toilet!  After talking with the plumber, it seems that when there is pressure buildup, the wax ring where the toilet connects to the sewage line can break and water will exit there. 

The good news is that while we was fixing and resetting the toilet, he was able to use a large bore auger and actually do the clean out.  The bad news, however, was that this was not covered by our home warranty because it was now an "existing problem".  Whatever, we just wanted our plumbing working again!

But it gets better... He started augering out the sewage line and got the water line to drop and improved the drainage.  But at about 75-80 feet out he encountered a wall, literally, and was unable to go any further.  From the location of the blockage, he posited that this was likely the point of junction with the city sewage line and that somehow the two had become dissociated. In order to fix this, he will need to contact the city and receive permission to work on it, but will also need to access the property line cleanout site.  (Homeownership really should come with a manual!) 

When we initially had our drains scoped back in may, the guy had mentioned that he thought he had located our property line cleanout site but that it appeared to be under the sidewalk.  Oh....great.  So this means we may need to get another scope by a sewage line guy and once we locate the property line cleanout, will need to access thatby cutting through the sidewalk and then potentially fix this apparently faulty connection between our sewage line and the city main line. Yayyyy.....

So in the meantime we've been in water conservation mode. We've become quite adept at taking three minute showers and minimizing any extra water usage (and what we can put in a container and dump on the garden we do). But sometimes you really just want to take a nice long shower!

Coulda Shoulda Woulda

Well, this is why I dislike service weekends. 

I had on my to-do list that I wanted to dig up the front yard sewage cleanout so it would be accessible if we had a clog.  I even went to Lowes and bought a shovel to dig it out with.  But sunday night rolled around, and I was just too tired to dig a two foot deep hole in the front yard.  Oh well, I'll do it next weekend.

Fast forward to monday night at about 11:30pm. Flush the toilet and it starts to backup. Made a solo trip to the nearby 24 hour walmart (mandy declined to accompany me after our last trip to walmart) and picked up a plunger.  As a side note, what is it about Walmart after midnight that such strange people are there: young mexican couples making out in the checkout lane; a family of about twenty, complete with about 10 kids under the age of five doing what looked like grocery shopping; at least two morbidly obese middle aged ladies on their little motorized scooters; and a family selling tamales in the parking lot.  AT MIDNIGHT!

Anyways, got back and plunged the toilet with minimal success.  I figured I'd let it sit for a while and try again in the morning so went to take a shower and found that nothing was draining there either. Oh crap.  Totally figures I would have a mainline backup two days after I was supposed to expose the main cleanout.

$175 later, everything is flushing and draining beautifully.  On the plus side, the plumbing company we used, Courtesy Plumbing, was super quick to respond and had a plumber out within half an hour of talking with them on Monday.

I guess this weekend I'll actually have to DO everything on my to do list.