As the World Turns, With Seths99's plumbing/septic: A story to amuse (for you) and piss off (for me)
so there I am on Monday afternoon, enjoying a nice snow day due to severely icy roads. anyway, my brother flushed the toilet in one part of the house, and another toilet gurgled. 'huh', I say to myself, 'that doesn't seem normal'. especially so when it gurgled on its own a few minutes later. Upon investigation at that point, the toilets were not flushing, but did drain water slowly. And so I say, 'okay, partial clog somewhere, or freeze'. So my dad comes over, he and I go down the the basement, and begin to (slowly and carefully) open the cleanouts in the plumbing in an attempt to find a clog. Nothing until the last one, closest to the exit, and then....BAM! pressure galore, and I got doused in a good dose of stagnant shit water. Awesome. (expected it, still did not enjoy).
At this point, it's about 7 o'clock and I say 'fuck it, it's clogged or frozen at the exit from the house, or between there and the septic, so I'll call a plumber tomorrow).
About an hour later, it occurs to me (keep in mind I've lived in this house for two years) that my system includes a pump station, due to a slight incline from my septic to my leech field. So I check the breaker box. Sure enough, tripped. Bad news. A clog could have been snaked or blasted out. This meant likely a fried pump.
Which brings us to yesterday. I take a personal day so I can clear out the pumping station and septic tank cover so the septic vac people can empty out my system. Pump station, no problem, the access is above ground, so I just had to shovel out the snowbank. done. Then the septic. keep in mind it was 0F yesterday here, and the wind had started to pick up. Ive worked and played in colder weather, but not by much. I knew right where the tank was, so my brother and I start hacking at the frozen ground with pickaxes. After about an hour and managing to clear about 3" down, I gave up and decided to pay the septic vac people to do it. So they break out the jackhammer, find the tank, and empty everything out. Great.
And now today, the pump guy is currently on site. What he basically said is the people who replaced it last time went as cheap as they could, and now I'm paying the price for that. Figure about $800 for a new pump there.
Home ownership ain't all it's cracked up to be.
