Jump to content

redrocket04

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,371

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

 Content Type 

Posts posted by redrocket04

  2. First time home owner discoveries, including maggots.

    in Dumpster

    Posted · Edited by redrocket04

    There was poop coming out of a hole in my basement.

    I came home near midnight. I had some papers I wanted to put away. I went down in the dark, and when I stepped off the last stair, I heard a splash. No big deal, though. I’d had little puddles of moisture in the basement before. It’s an old house; basements aren’t perfect.

    But when I turned on the lights, I was standing in a vast, shallow swamp.

    “Man, that’s a lot of rainwater,” I thought. “Wonder where the leak is…”

    After a moment of leak-searching the walls I realized something: It hadn’t rained that day.

    Or the day before. Not at all.

    So it wasn’t rainwater.

    And, now that I thought about it, it didn’t smell like rainwater.

    I looked down at my feet, which were soaked an inch high, and – I’m embarrassed to say it – I jumped up onto a dry patch.

    Regaining composure, I began to investigate. The puddle was seeping from a wall behind the workbench.

    Behind the workbench is a little rectangular room, about the size of a picnic table. The natural-gas meter is in there, as well as some shelves and a dozen old, empty milk bottles.

    I opened the door. The light was off, and it was black. But the smell was unmistakable: it was poop.

    Feces. Sewage.

    A horrible mix of sweet and bitter. The kind of smell you taste in your mouth. Although, by this point, the only taste I had in my mouth was of gagging.

    The light revealed a gruesome scene. There, in about two inches of standing water, below the blissfully odorless milk bottles, were a few turds, a bunch of spent toilet paper, and various other relics of bathroom trips past.

    All of this (you can open your eyes now, I’ll stop with the descriptions) was coming out of a two-foot square hole in the middle of the floor.

    I braced myself in the doorway, and poked at the hole with a mop handle. This revealed nothing, except that the consistency of sewage is a little like soaking-wet leaves. And that poking a septic puddle in your basement is a very, very slow way to resolve your problem.

    Now, I am a young person. I had lived in this house for less than a year, so perhaps I did not know many things which an older, more experienced home-owner would have known.

    But as I stood there, in a state of raw-sewage confusion, I had to ask myself, “Why is there poop coming out of my basement?”

    I mean, what possible justification could that have? There is just no reason why it should happen. None. Ever.

    And yet, owning a home is not about what should happen, it’s about what does happen. And what did happen, apparently, was that the poop highway was backed up, and the sewage had taken the only exit available. My basement.

    So, though the hour was late, I did the only thing I could think of. I turned to the only tool I trust in situations like this: the ShopVac.

    After a while, the ShopVac’s little pot-belly was full. I couldn’t dump it in the basement sink, primarily because I was afraid it would come right back out the hole in the floor, and I’d be stuck in some torturous Tom-and-Jerry-like poop-loop.

    So I girded up my barrel of waste, and brought it out into the street, where I released the sludge into the sewers from whence it came.

    After two more rounds of this, the floor was mostly dry, and I was feeling rightly proud of myself for handling the emergency so well. So I stood there, at the base of the steps, my fists upon my hips, chin up, hair blowing in the putrid air.

    And that’s when I heard the door open and close upstairs. My roommate was home, and I could hear his footsteps going up the stairs, toward the bathroom.

    Shortly, I heard another door close, and then, a little while later, the sound I was dreading: the toilet flushed.

    With my eyes I traced the imaginary path the fresh waste was taking down the bowels of my house. I looked at my watch; I knew what was coming.

    I looked at what was left of the puddle beneath the workbench. With horror, I noticed it was growing. Creeping out from behind the walls.

    Something was wrong, and I had only addressed the symptom, not the cause. But by then it was almost 2 a.m., and dark, poopy basements start feeling pretty creepy at that hour.

    So I turned out the lights and went upstairs to sleep. The water could go on seeping in the dark.

    In the morning I awoke with the sudden realization that I couldn’t do the one thing I wanted to do most: use the toilet.

    I thought of going outside, but it was broad daylight, and my neighbors are not that friendly.

    Bodily fluids are great motivators, though, so, at 7:30 in the morning, I lurched out of bed and got the phone book. To my surprise and relief, there was a listing, under ‘Public Works’, for ‘Sewer Complaints/Back-ups’,

    This was exactly what I needed! I had a sewer complaint! I had a sewer back-up! These people would help me!

    I told the man on the phone what the problem was (poopy basement) and he said my main line was probably clogged somewhere between my house and the street.

    I didn’t care what it was, as long as he (or someone like him) was going to come fix it.

    But he wasn’t coming, he said. And neither was anyone else. Because the main line, between my house and the street, is not the city’s problem. They only take care of the big sewers, beneath the streets. He advised me to call a plumber, or if I wanted to save money, to get a snake.

    A snake is a round or flat piece of flexible metal that can be of varying lengths. At the end it has a pointy tip – either arrow or corkscrew-shaped – which is used to poke through the offending clot.

    The plumbers I called said they would charge in the neighborhood of $190 to clear the obstruction.

    Within 20 minutes, I was standing at the Home Depot checkout counter with a snake and some Drano.

    Back in the milk-bottle room, I set up some 2×4’s to stand on (sewage is remarkably slippery if you’re not careful) and started threading the snake into the murky water. After a few failed tries and a burning sensation in my eyes, I got it through.

    After about 40 feet, I ran out of snake, and I thought I felt something give way, so I pulled the flat wire back out.

    As I did that, it dawned on me that the snake I was pulling through my hands had just passed through perhaps the 40 most unholy feet of water I would ever encounter in my life. And I decided, with great resolve, that gloves were needed.

    When tip of the snake came out, it brought something with it. Like a cat leaving a dead mouse on the front steps, the snake dropped a softball-sized clump of black, dripping, stringy things.

    “This is horrid,” I said to myself. “This is not worth saving $190.”

    And that was before I realized the clump I was holding (I think they might have been tree roots) was crawling with worms and thin, white slugs.

    On the other hand, practically anything is worth saving money. Especially when it comes to fixing things that go wrong with your house. There’s just something priceless about being able to say you fixed it yourself.

    Except I couldn’t say that yet. Because, while the water was beginning to drain, it was moving very slowly. And I knew that if my roommates or I flushed even a moderate-sized expulsion, it would end up on the basement floor.

    So I went to the hardware store and asked for the strongest drain cleaner they had. Drano hadn’t done it. I didn’t want any prissy foams or gels. I wanted fire, liquid fire.

    So they gave me Insta-Flo, a sodium-hydroxide powder that reacts with hot water to produce intense heat which “will burn its way through small roots” and “causes severe burns”, depending on where you apply it.

    Back at home, I stood contemplating the “harmful or fatal if swallowed” warning, and it occurred to me that if I were going to die of Insta-Flo poisoning, I didn’t want to do it here. No dignity in that.

    So I donned goggles and a face mask as the directions suggested, and commenced pouring. The powder bristled and popped when it touched the hot water I was running through the pipe; the sound of my problems melting.

    It sounded nice.

    Even better, it worked. An hour and another Insta-Flo application later, the pipe was draining perfectly; it was like a little gurgling creek, right there in my basement.

    And, by the way, don’t think there isn’t any sewage in those city creeks. Stay out of there, kids, nature isn’t what it used to be.

    So the water was flowing, my skin wasn’t burning, and the slug-clump had been disposed of (in the storm sewer again). Everything was rosy (except all the sewage that had spilled onto the basement floor, but I got rid of that with a snow shovel and, what else, the ShopVac).

    And, though it wasn’t easy, I gained a lot from the experience. I now know that there is no household problem so dreadful that it can’t be solved with the right tools and persistence (and a lot of poking). Not to mention dumb luck and self-endangerment.

    But I also learned that a house has its own logic, even when it seems as though it’s rebelling against you. When poop is coming out of a hole in the basement, there’s a reason. If there’s a leak in the ceiling, there’s a reason.

    And if you know the reasons, you can try to address the problem. It may be difficult. It may be god-awful disgusting. But this is your house, and there’s nothing you can’t handle.

    At least, there’s nothing you can’t handle the first time. If there’s a second or third or fourth time, you reach the limit every do-it-your-self homeowner eventually reaches, where you refuse to stand in raw sewage for another minute.

    Because owning a house involves learning not only what you’re capable of doing, but also what you’re willing to do. The first category grows as the second category shrinks.

    And you call a plumber.

  6. Pit Bull Front and rear stands

    in LBTS GLWS

    Posted

    Man, I store my bike on the stands...I put it on the stands when I put air in the tires, lube the chain, work on the bike too...definitely for oil changes as well. Ownership of a sportbike isn't true ownership unless you have front/rear stands! They make the package. It's like not having a car jack for your car. :dunno:

    air in the tires?

    I've never stored a bike on the stand. I don't even like using it, it's awkward. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

  7. Pit Bull Front and rear stands

    in LBTS GLWS

    Posted

    how you gonna lube yer chain?

    Same way I lubed my chain on my bikes before the CBR. I don't use the stands for anything other than chain lubing, and it just seems like a waste for me to have actual pit bull stands just for that.

    Besides that, I've got an itch for another bike I saw, and it comes with stands of its own. Or, it will come with the stands when I show up with moneys and say I want a set of stands, too. :)

  11. Msf course

    in Tech and Tips

    Posted

    Nobody did in my class, because you don't go over like 20 mph AT MOST. Long sleeves, boots, jeans, and helmet/gloves were fine.

    Of course, I took the class with Harley people, so that may make a difference.

  12. Msf course

    in Tech and Tips

    Posted

    Im only 5.6-7 and when I took the class they had honda cb250s. It was low enough for me that my hips cramped up "power walking" it.

    Oh, yes... Power walking... lol.

    I'm sad I've not experienced the joys of shitty msf class 250's.

  18. looking for roommate in Columbus

    in Dumpster

    Posted

    are you a partier?

    Lol. No. I'm far from it. I'm one of those people that wants my house to be home, not just where I sleep. So it's pretty homey. Serene, even. Not like new age, hippie style, just organized, it doesn't smell like feet and old pizza, you can sit on my couch without worrying what you'll have sticking to your clothes when you stand back up, etc. That's what I'm looking for in a roommate. Maybe I'll find someone that matches that, or maybe I won't. Maybe they'll be on OR, or maybe I'll just have an extra room forever.

  24. looking for roommate in Columbus

    in Dumpster

    Posted

    how does she react to cats? I have two. Also are you a neat freak or do you let shit get messy and dishes sit in the sink?

    I have no idea how she'd react to a cat. She's never been around a cat. I'm not a neat freak, but I also don't let shit get messy and dishes sit in the sink. I just don't get pissed off when someone doesn't hang a towel right, etc.

×
×
  • Create New...