Windemere

        As luck would have it I finally got my heating issue fully resolved this morning. Of course my house is never one to let me have a moment of respite and before the HVAC guy even showed up this morning my plumbing had backed up into the basement again over the weekend. I had at first hoped that this would end up being a minor revist of the same issue I had back in June.

        A quick call to the warranty company (ok these calls are never really quick) and I was able to schedule a plumber to come out today to deal with the backup. Luckily I'd already talked to my boss and pretty much wrote off making it into the office.

        After some prodding, poking, head scratching etc the plumber got down to business and brought in the big drain cleaning machine and fired it up. Basically it was the same exact machine I'd dragged home from work over the summer when last I had this problem. After an hour of running it back and forth through the main line and cursing, he declared that things were bad. This wasn't just a clogged pipe but was most likely a broken/collapsed line.

        As he said this and then started explaining things I stopped really hearing his words and what he was explaining sort of faded out to the waugh waugh sounds that Charlie Brown's teacher makes. Instead all I could hear was "Man you are fucked. But on the positive side I'm totally going to be able to make my boat payment this month."

        After snapping back to reality I caught the last bit of "We can bring back a camera tomorrow and we'll camera the line to confirm and see if the line is broken and where the break is. Of course cameraing the line isn't covered by the home warranty so that's going to have to come out of pocket.

        Stay tuned for more on this breaking news story.

        There is nothing more exciting that dropping a camera down your sewer drain to get a first hand look at things. Actually that's not true. There is very little exciting about it. Mostly it is expensive.

        Today's cameraing went as well as could be expected. The camera went down the line, and slowly foot by foot we examined the pipe from the inside. Good, another foot, good, another foot, good. This continued on until a blockaged could be seen. And it was definitely dirt. And the best part was that it was just oustide the foundation of the house in the front yard.

        At this point my fears were confirmed and the plumber turned to me and once again I heard "Yup, I'm definitely going to be able to make my boat payment this month, and with the way things are looking I'm probably going to be able to make next month's payment too."

        This is the point at which my faith in civilization starts to crack. The front yard is no-mans land. If the plumbing problem were within the house my home warranty and or home owners insurance would leap to the rescue to pay for the work. If the problem were out at the street the city would leap into action to save one of their precious tax paying citizens from the evils of backed up sewage. But the 50' from the foundation wall of my house out to the street? No-one covers this. That's solely my responsibility. And this sucks. Alot. Mostly because it is horifically horifically expensive to dig up a trench that is 50' long 8' deep and most likely swampy and sewage laden in order to replace the sewer line. To further complicate things and increase expenses the gas service and water service lines are also run directly above the sewer line. This means that instead of brining out a big backhoe and taking a few minutes to dig down to the line that the plumber will have to use the big backhoe to dig down the first 2 feet and then they'll have to hand dig around the water and gas lines most of the rest of the way. This sucks for them, and in a world where suck rolls down hill they pass the suck on to me in the way of a staggering bill.

        So this Thursday I'll be at home watching buckets full of my front yard being dug up while the plumbing foreman browses through the BassPro catalog to see what's new in the way of outboard motors for 08.

        When last we checked in with our hero he was looking into the magic orb of prognostication and the mighty power of the oracle was predicting a very expensive future.

        This sounds a lot better than saying that I nearly burst into tears when I looked at the 13" monitor attached to the sewer cam and was told that that vague blob on the upper left of the screen meant that I would need to have my sewer line replaced and that the plumber would be heading over to the marina to check out the yacht market while I decided what to do.

        When presented with the question: Do you want the stuff you flush down your toilet and rinse down your drains to A) Collect in a pool in your basement or B) Flow merrily down a pipe to the east river treatment plant it doesn't take a very bright person to come to the conclusion that B is probably the better choice.

        So bright and early last Thursday morning the crew showed up at my house to mark lines, dig holes, repair sewer lines, and generally make a really large mess in my front yard. Which I have to say is preferable to the really large mess in the basement that I've been dealing with. If you'd like to see the before, during, and after photos check out the photo gallery here

        While it may look like my home has been invaded by a particularly virulent and aggressive pack of badgers I can now take great pride in flushing a toilet and knowing that everything will be safely carried down the drain and out into the great wild yonder of the city municipal sewer system. So many thanks to our ancient Roman & Babylonian ancestors for coming up with the idea of using underground pipes and water to get poo out of the house.

        The mental image of being held down and having water poured over you to the point that you feel as if you are drowning only to be given a moment's respite to gasp for breath before once again being plunged beneath the water is truly awful and terrifying. It also seems to very much akin to the experience of owning a home. Well in particular very much like owning my home.

        Homeownership seems to be at best a zero sum game. At worst, i.e. at present, it is far far below coming even close to balancing out. After every trial, after every tribulation, after every problem, after every new expense there is always another. With barely a moment's respite to regain your breath between each saga before being once again plunged into the despair of the latest project/disaster/flood etc.

        Last night I ended up having a rare evening of being at home rather than out working and also not feeling so beat down by the world that I actually felt like getting some things done instead of making the committed effort to vegitate into a barnacle like growth on my couch. I made dinner, did a backlog of dishes, vacuumed, cleaned up, took out the trash, etc etc etc. In all, a remarkably productive evening for me. So at around 11pm at the end of my whirlwind of effort I headed downstairs to throw a load of clothes into my new modern state of the art laundry center. And as I came to the bottom of the basement stairs I stepped onto the basement carpet and felt and heard a "squish".

        Having just signed away my life, first and second born children, and a kidney or two to pay for repairs to the sewer system; the worst most tortuous awful thing I could possibly have heard was the sound of more water in my basement. The feeling goes beyond rational or even irrational emotions. Dumbfounded and flabbergasted only begin to crack the surface of defining the feeling. Waterboarding comes perhaps only slightly closer.

        There is no emotional outporing that can come close to expressing this feeling of utter and abject despair. No amount of yelling, crying, pounding fists, screaming or anything else seems to provide any relief whatsoever.

        After spending a few stunned seconds squishing around at the foot of the stairs letting the weight of things settle in, I began to search out the source of this water. It turns out that it is at least not directly related to the recent sewer work. That all seems fine. Turns out the crack-addicted, half blind, mostly retarded, idiot plumber that the former owners must have hired to have plumbing work done around the house had... we'll call it "botched" (in a fairly large way) the connection from the washing machine drain connection to the rest of the plumbing system. As best I can figure most of the water that went into the washer to do a load of laundry ended up leaking out around the pvc connection they failed to glue and thusly ended up on the floor.

        At this point the emotions shift back to the realm of expressable. Cursing, yelling, throwing things and punching walls are well suited means of expressing the grief, anger and contempt for the work of this former plumber.

        With hacksaw and pvc glue in hand I crawled behind the washer and made a temporary repair to the affected drain. Tonight, or at some point this weekend I'll go head over to my good friend Homer's for some plumbing parts to complete repairs and once again restore order and some semblance of dryness to my basement.

        Of course at this point I'm torn. If I move forward on reparing this problem and once again fix things I would then once again at a point of contented stasis. This state of well-being and contentment seems to be heavily frowned upon by my home. Maybe by leaving this alone and dealing with water water everywhere will appease my home and we will be able to agree to disagree.