January 8, 2021 Remember Gilda Radnor as Roseann Roseannadanna from Saturday Night Live? What a great comedienne, what a great show! Those were the days. 🙂
Well, today it was our day to laugh. Ha Ha. If it’s not one thing, it’s another…. Who could even believe this? It was either laugh or cry…. We were going through the house just to check that the front door was secure, etc. etc. Bob called me to the basement, “Hey Ellen, what is this wet spot?” The floor in the back corner of the basement was just a big puddle, and there is no water source anywhere near by, just the clean out pipe from the old house plumbing. Then, we saw more wet concrete, and THEN we saw the “pit” with the old septic pipe, now filled with dark water! Holy shit!
We could NOT believe this. What now? I called John Shea (he had just been over here the other day with his invoice from the busted pipe 2020 Sh** Show) and told him that it seemed like the septic was somehow backing up under the house. He said, “Haha, I’m about ready to head north for the weekend with my wife, she thinks your house is awesome.” I said, “No, I’m not joking! The basement is all wet, it seems like the water is coming up from the ground under the floor!” He couldn’t believe it either… he thought I was joking, but he agreed to come over to check it out before he left.
The upshot is that he opened the septic tank cover, ran a snake toward the house, discovered, and freed, a clog at the “Y” in the pipes where the new and old septic lines joined. This apparently was forcing waste water to go back towards the house up the old pipe, and the pressure popped the cap off the old pipe in the “pit”. We flushed and flushed and tested, and the pipes were clear. John re-capped the pipe in the pit, and the crisis was over, thank you John!! His advice? Use single-ply TP, flush twice for #2, and spray bleach all over the wet floors in the basement.
As to why the water was coming up through the floor? We’ll have to figure it out in the spring, but every scenario seems to include cracked pipes, jackhammers and dollar signs…. But for now, we’re outta here!
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