First time home owner discoveries, including maggots.

[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.

Edited April 27, 2010 by redrocket04

[natedogg624]

bravo good story mate

[CBR600rr]

Insurance?

[Casper]

['74Honda]

Thats terrible! I'm glad you got it fixed. Your a great writer though!

[redrocket04]

lol, I didn't write this. I had a clogged drain, so I looked up solutions and found this blog. My problem was just a hair ball.

[CattaniAFJ]

Jesus Christ...

[chrisknight]

I had this exact situation. Only I called a plumber. My house was built in the late 60's and it had 4" x 3' clay drain tiles mated end to end with rubber gaskets. The tree roots out front grew into it over time. They dug out 2 sections where the root was totally blocking the tiles, it looked like a big log had grown in there. The hole he is talking about in the story is probably the basement floor drain. I still remember it like it was yesterday. I stepped off the bottom step in my socks and instantly knew what the issue was. It was sick! ...and that ball of mass, tampons. I swear. Its nasty. Tampons expand and get hung up on any root or snag of any kind. Whats worse, I own a duplex, live in 1/2 and rent the other 1/2 out. 1 sewage line goes out to the road and the 2 sides of my house are joined under my half. I had all the shower, poop, dishes, and whatever in my basement from both sides. They dug up all the clay tile from the edge of the house to the street and replaced it with very thick PVC all the way out.

Man, that was SICK!

Edited April 27, 2010 by chrisknight

[Sapphy]

I laughed until my side hurt. Good story

[ShankroidBeast]

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

Whomever wrote this was good. It was very entertaining and well written. Great find

[cfd37buckeye]

Better than the guy here who ran an auger through his sewer line, hit an obstruction, which was the gas line that Columbia Gas had done a blind bore on about 2 years previous. Intersected the waste line with a 2 inch gas line......can you say boom? @ 1/2 houses destroyed from a clogged drain.

[ReconRat]

Epic... but experience says that those caustic chemicals are no fun if they don't work. You wind up with having to work in and around the mess to continue trying to fix it.

Power tools. A power snake, and run it back and forth when you think you've hit the clog. Sometimes more than once.

That power wet/dry vac can actually pull everything back out of a line, if you can get the other pipes and vents blocked off. I've actually gone on the roof and taped a bathroom vent shut while I worked.

[AOW]

hydro-jet FTW

[Fonzie]

:puke:Forget that mess.... I'd of paid the $190... GLADLY!!

Edited April 28, 2010 by Fonzie

[jeremygsxr]

That story reminds me of a bad sexual experience i once had.

[Benyen Soljax]

:puke:Forget that mess.... I'd of paid the $190... GLADLY!!

+1

[wht_scorpion]

[flounder]

mediocre story at best.

[jessecwalters]

:puke:Forget that mess.... I'd of paid the $190... GLADLY!!

Also +1, 200$ and i dont have to shower in bleach.

[redkow97]

I think Roto Rooter has this on their vans - i know it's one of the major plumbing franchises:

"Your #2 problem is our #1 priority."

My parents have tree roots growing into their clay pipes, so 'dark water' backed up into our basement 3 or 4 times when I was growing up. After the 4th time, my dad realized it was cheaper and less painful to just rent a pipe snake and clear the drains every 6 months BEFORE any problems occurred.

Preventative maintenance isn't just for bikes. Wise advice.

[DGTL GRL]

I was just thinking--- did you you post about needing a room mate?

[hollywood3586]

Also +1, 200$ and i dont have to shower in bleach.

good story, but some of you are wussies. If it comes to saving a little dough then i will wade in poop to save a drain. I have an 80 some year old house, so i know i will have my fair share of poop stories as well..

[jessecwalters]

Not a wuss, Im lazy Thats too much work for me.

[Disclaimer]

Must be a girl thing...Also why I don't change diapers. $190 isn't something to scoff at, but I'd fork it over not to wade in a smelly bacteria laden environment without the appropriate equipment.

Time is money, too.

[jessecwalters]

^^ plus 190$ to know it was done correctly