Into Parenthood: Expensive Project # 2

Sundays are bad days to need a plumber... yet it seems only on Sundays do I realize I need one.

Last Sunday (July 26th) our kitchen sink started filling up, for the third time, when we ran water down it. I got so fed up with trying to fix it, and realized that it was something I couldn't fix, that I decided to call a plumber and have them come out the following Monday. As painful as it was to pay them to snake the pipe, it was sheer joy to be able to cook in my kitchen again (which is very hard to do without running water).

Yesterday... well yesterday made the kitchen sink seem like a skinned knee.

Yesterday was a good day for laundry and picking up around the house, that is, until I went down into the basement and saw that the floor drain was flooding (just a little bit of) water into the basement. I had noticed wet spots near the floor drain, but as I watched the washing machine drain, the water came back out of the floor drain. Needless to say, I called a plumber, specifically Roto Rooters. A plumber came out with a big heavy machine to snake the sewage pipe leading out of the house (we have access to it from the basement).

If you are following the story correctly, you might have come to the conclusion that the water in the basement was also the sewage from our bathroom. Your conclusion would be correct.

The nice plumber guy (who was not fat or middle-aged, and wore a belt) tried to run the snake into the main sewage line... five times. He got on the phone with his boss, after pulling up mud, and told us the horrible horrible news: the sewage pipe in our basement floor was broken and would have to be replaced. "The biggest job we do", were his words. Not something either of us wanted to hear.

I immediately called my loving parents for advice, and possibly financial assistance, who both strongly recommended that we get a second opinion on what needed to be done, and how much it would cost. Thank God for good parents; it probably saved us $5K.

Work started on the sewage lines this afternoon, and will be done tomorrow. It involves installing a sump-pump, a new utility sink, running PVC pipes around the perimeter of the basement and out through the basement wall (that's right...a brand new connection to the main sewage line), and digging a big whole in the yard. The big old cast iron sewage pipes that were running vertically in our basement will be removed, and the floor will be filled and leveled where they once were.

Here are some pictures of the current work. I am going to set up an album of the wall work on Flickr; when it is ready, I will post a link here.

-Jon