Main Sewer Line

Warning: Long Posts, Lots of Pictures, But What's Been Going on in Our Life. And actually kind of interesting and funny....

So I realize this was over a month ago...but it was quite the adventure. It all started March 3rd, Wednesday evening at 6:00. I had gone down to the basement to get cheese from the freezer for the R.S. Birthday Dinner Activity and to my shock found a huge puddle of water on the basement floor, approx. 10 gal., sorry no pics, didn't think at the time. Thankfully there wasn't much wet, but I thought great, here we go again. I've come to realize we are jinxed when it comes to plumbing issues, post from 2008. Anyway...Thankfully I had made a spur of the moment purchase on Black Friday, of a wet/dry Shop vac, it has been worth it's weight in gold! It made cleaning so so so easy, mind you I had an hour before R.S. Well we have payed after hours plumbing before and really did not want to do so again, so we thought we'd be careful and call in the morning. Sadly, we forgot to turn the water softener off....so we flooded again...this time a little worse but still thankfully nothing major was damaged.

So we called in a rooter. We had not sawed off the clean out pipe in the front of the house so it was easily accessible. When the guy opened up the clean out and sent the camera down he immediately hit standing water at the T so he put down the snake and was able to get the water to drain slightly. However, it would not drain all the way and no matter what end he put on the snake it could not bust through what was causing the blockage. The water was also too murky to be able to get a picture. blah. $295 for no result. This of course all is happening, one week after our year warranty has expired. So we call in the big guns....David's Dad....We should have just called him in the first place, but I guess I was trying to be independent.... He has connections of course, so he called his friend to bring in his power washer to see if that would go through, or at least clear up the water enough to get a picture of what was going on. He couldn't come till Friday morning, and since we really couldn't put anything down the drain, we spent the night with David's parents. We were unable to be there ourselves Friday, because my Uncle Dennis had passed away and his funeral was in Monroe that day, so thankfully Mark was willing and able to take care of things for us. The funeral was really good, we all cried, but we all laughed too, and that is what Uncle Dennis would want.

Well they were able to get a picture....

Yes that is inside our pipe and yes that is the edge of the pipe on the bottom right. It is a little hard to see because of the glare, but there are 3-4 rocks at the end of the pipe. Another $225. Lovely... I had already contacted Bach homes on Thursday and ironically some of the upper ups of the company had seen the first rooter at our home, when they were at the speck home next door. So they were kind of expecting our call....Mark called them again though on Friday, after they found the results and figured they would have been on things and we were told they would be there Saturday morning. So we stayed with Woolley's Friday night as well and waited. My great neighbors would go over and check to see if anything was going on for us, since we were 10 minutes away, but there was nothing happening. So after gazillions of calls, we finally found out that they had come by and tried knocking to let us know they had to wait for blue stakes and a permit from the city, and that the earliest they could start digging would probably be Wednesday morning! Helloooooo, of course we weren't going to be home and you had our number for crying out loud! We had assumed all that was being taken care of Friday afternoon..... What do you do. Thankfully Mark knows people and had actually worked for Bach years ago, so really knew people, he put the pressure on to have things moving first thing Monday morning. So we stayed with Mark and Cindy, Saturday and Sunday as well. Then sent some emails and made some more calls Monday. Blue Stakes came out, and we had the permit Monday after 5:00, Cities can be a pain. So one more night at the Woolley's. Thank you Thank you Thank you Mom and Dad!!!!

So Tuesday morning it begun.

Can you count how many people are in the picture?

There are 6 men and 1 little boy there. They had to do some digging with shovels to look for wires, etc. that Blue Stakes had marked......yeah, they never found any, I'm starting to worry about how well Blue Stakes really checks....

Anna was at school for all of this, but Brent was in Heaven!!

dig dig dig

I failed to mention how deep they were going to have to go...

Actually it was 12 feet by the time they hit pipe!

Did I mention Brent was in Heaven? Oh, yeah, I did.

12 feet down baby!

Broken pipe in all its glory! It ended up being 8 in. to a foot apart!

Cleaning it out so they can replace it.

I left at this point, cuz it was lunch time, but my FIL has more pictures that I'm waiting on, I'll post them when we get there. So we really don't know the reason for the break and they may still be debating who is at fault, but thankfully it wasn't us, and Bach was great about reimbursing us for both rooters, and quickly too, since it all went on the credit card. The first rooter guy had given me a quote of what it would cost to excavate, $4600-$8800 depending! AHHHHH I'm so so so glad we did not have to pay that! It didn't cost the guys nearly that much to do this, since it was cost, but I'm sure they still weren't to happy about it. We were back in our home that night, but the front yard still sort of has a hole, not 12' though. They are waiting to landscape the house next door then they'll fix our grass. So we were displaced for a total of 5 nights, at the best hotel ever! What an adventure!