What My Weekend Involved

Well this weekend was a result of what started last week. Last week my wife noticed water coming out from under the wall in the hallway. Come to find out it came from our bathroom where it came out from under the toilet. So I got this bladder to try to blow out the clogged pipe outside the house I found.  Tried for 2 days and it wouldn't go down. I was leaving for a business trip the next week so I needed to get this fix ASAP. So one friend suggested the water department and I called them on Friday. I meet the guy at my house and there is nothing in the pipe. It cleared itself out. He could tell it was backed up though. So he got a truck over and pushed a ton of water into the pipe. Nothing came back and it all went through, so looks like the problem is solved. So the weekend goes fine outside of the toilet in the 2nd bathroom gurgling some.

So Monday I leave and my wife tells me she had to plunge the toilet to get the water to go down and through the week it keeps gurgling filling up and going down.

So I get home Thursday and go check the pipe to see if its backed up. Sure enough it is. I call the water department again and the same guy comes out. He sees it is backed up and gets two different trucks to come out. One to flush it out and the 2nd one that brought a camera to put down the pipe. They pushed the pipe all the way down almost into the sewage part where it's not in the pipe anymore. It's still not going down in the water so they pull it out and finally get it cleared out to put the camera down in it. So they put the camera in and through three bends and a belly in the pipe only seeing one spot where the heavy rain is draining some water into the pipe bit it's not clogged up. They start pulling it out and when they almost pull it out of the hole they see roots in the line. The clog is right there almost where it starts. So guess what, it's over 12 foot from the curb, I have to fix it.

That's an expensive plumber bill so I make phone calls and try to figure some things out. One of my friends says he can help me fix it if I dig the hole.  He used to be a plumber so he knows what to do. Needless to say I was digging a big hole in my front yard Friday afternoon.

So I dig down and I find this.

I've got more than just a root problem. The pipe isn't even in the hole. It's half way down. It's amazing this wasn't a problem when the house was built 8 years ago. So I call my friend and I've got to dig it out so we can put in a new piece to fix the problem. So I dug it out until I couldn't see at night anymore.

The next day once I got back from running some errands, I finished clearing it out so we can work on it.

So my friend comes over, we go buy the parts needed and he gets it fixed so the slight angle is fixed and the flow is good.  Didn't have any leaks coming out either.

It's to dark to work on it so after church on Sunday I went to filling in the hole and I put rock salt around the new section where the pipe is connected to kill any roots from trying to grow into it. I didn't realize how many rocks I dug up until I went to fill up the hole. At least I got it all filled back in and will see if me digging the grass up with dirt under it will help it grow back faster.

So now it's all done and I spent around $100 to fix the problem. Bought a shovel, small spade, gloves, pipe, connectors for pipe, glue, cement glue and gave my friend some money for helping me out. Especially since he brought the saw to cut the pipe up where me buying a hand saw would have taken a lot longer. I was very grateful for his help.

So good luck to anyone out there who does this themselves. It's a good weekend project and I've been sore since Friday.