I have been absent from the blogging world because well, not much new to report about my house. The dog days of summer are here, and when it's 105 degrees outside, I don't really feel like working in my yard. Everything out there is dead, fried and crispy now.
I did have a plumbing nightmare this past weekend. I should preface this by saying that yes, my house is an old house. Supposedly built in 1950 (I suspect earlier). I've had smallish plumbing problems before, like the bathtub draining slowly. The last time I had to call a plumber out was about a year ago.
This past Friday, my washing machine backed up into my bathtub not once but three times. This would happen when the washer was on the rinse cycle, and then when the washer drained, the bathtub drained with it. Innocuous enough, I figured. There wouldn't be a problem so long as I wasn't doing laundry.
Saturday, the toilet started making gurgling noises when I was showering. Then the bathtub stopped draining, and the water level in the toilet bowl started slowly raising. I guess the bathtub was backing up into the toilet. I STUPIDLY flushed the toilet, and yeah, it overflowed. It sent water ALL over my bathroom floor and under my sink cabinet. Every time after that, the shower would do the same thing and the water level would rise in the toilet. I could only flush the toilet if I'd plunged most of the water out of the bowl. And I could hear water sloshing around in my pipes behind the walls. Nothing was draining out to the sewer!
My mom just met the plumber over at my house, and I'm set back $207 for the roto-rooting job. They had to go in through the drain in the backyard, and supposedly pulled a whole mess of roots out of my lines. The plumber says that if I start having to do this two or three times a year, then it's time to replace my entire sewer line to the alley. Which would run me around $2500. I don't have that kind of money, and won't anytime soon...
I found on roto-rooter's website that they have this stuff called root destroyer? Anyone familiar or tried this stuff? Depending on the cost, it might be worth it to use it regularly, if it would help.
2 comments:
Check with your homeowners insurance. If you have roots growing into the line your insurance company might cover the cost of replacing the line, minus what you pay for your deductible. Your description about what happened is exactly what happened to my house about a week ago. We found out that we have to replace the entire line under our house going to the street. To the tune of 10,000 bucks. So I feel your pain.
I STUPIDLY flushed the toilet, and yeah, it overflowed.
Don't beat yourself up. I would have done the exact same thing.
I've got roots in my pipes too in my apartment, only they refuse to fix it...and it's making my plumbing go bezerk.
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