Lancifer and I have been doing a lot around the house as of late. Some planned, some not.
Of the "unplanned" nature we have: night before Thanksgiving sewage disaster, the flood of plenty in our master bathroom, and now a "we've gone too far" tale of the kitchen sink drains and disposal.
Then Lancifer has also been busy playing a game of attach and disassemble with the dryer vent aluminum hosing for various planned reasons.
We've discovered we have a tree root issue which triggered the first offense, the Thanksgiving eve sewage disaster. Luckily a nice man we hired gave us the scoop of how common this issue is and just how often we'll expect to see our own issues with it. There's also a possibility of having the city dig up and replace the pipes beyond our home.
A few things I've learned in this experience:
1) Do not get a sewage issue the night before, day of or day after on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
2) Always check with your home owners policy and insurance to see what you have covered under your plan for such issues and eventual clean ups.
3) Check with your city or county to see if you qualify to have the pipes that connect to yours dug up and replaced at their cost. Some places have an elaborate camera scope that diagnosis' the issue and then a bid process for who is hired to do the job.
4) If you are looking at homes and you have large mature trees, be prepared to handle such situations in the late fall and pretty much every year.
Unfortunately, our fun did not stop at hiring a plumber at 9:00pm on Thanksgiving Eve. We also had a casualty to this event... the master bathroom. I thought it was odd that when we moved in, the master bathroom was carpeted. I've never really seen all that many carpeted bathrooms, and for good reason. The result of our Thanksgiving Eve is one of those reasons.
After a valiant attempt at carpet cleaner, we knew the only choice was to remove the carpet entirely. Lancifer and I used utility knives to cut up the carpet and cut it at the door frames to salvage our bedroom carpet and closet carpet, which the water did not reach. As our master bath and bedroom are located on the lower level of this split ranch, this carpet was on top of concrete. It took some time and patience to get up all the concrete nails and to scrape away all the debris. We also have been letting the concrete that was under the soiled carpet dry for some time now. It was very damp and looked as though there had been water trapped under the carpet padding for some time.
Lessons here:
1) Get prepared: gloves, knives, flat head screw driver, hammers, scraper, and a wet/dry vac.
2) Carefully remove or dismantle any baseboards before attempting to lift carpet. (Don't worry, I did remember this)
3) Have a disposal plan... where is this nasty carpet going next.
4) Let the area below the carpet dry for a few days at least. Make sure no consistent leaks exist.
Our most recent adventure consists of our kitchen sink. It had been acting up, water was not going down the drains properly and was backing up in to both sides of the sink. Previous to this even, our dishwasher had been leaking, a tale tell sign that something is up with drainage. So we went out on a limb and decided to take apart the PVC piping from the drains and snake down our main pipeline. We got some gunk up, but nothing special. No surprise since we had sunk two drain-o solutions in it in previous weeks. At this point we wanted to see if we'd gotten any clearer, so we reassembled and tested our draining quality. Unfortunately, previous owners had used putty to seal the PVC together, and not plastic o-rings, so with the pressure of the water not draining properly, we had a gap in the PVC and a big mess of a clean up.
We're now on to buying a new disposal, as this is what the culprit must be at this point, and some o-rings to reassemble the PVC piping properly. More to come!
