AAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGG Sewer backed up in my basement!!!

[EuBrew]

Thank God I moved my office to the basement recently!! I was working and thought Man that's starting to stink, better check it out. Sure enough the sewer was backing up. Fortunately I caught it before it got out of hand. I tried to plunge the floor drain and had moderate success but it was still not draining completely. I have a drain line that I've run for the new brew cave that's just been roughed in with a cap on the top so I pulled off the cap, threw a sankey on the drain and shoved the leaf blower in the drain line and let it fly. I think it worked, everything drained after purging with the leaf blower a couple times. Glad I threw the keg on the drain because poop water shot out of the holes in the skirt!

Anyone have any suggestions to get the poo funk out of the air?? Man I hate sewer gas smell!!

 

[JetSmooth]

Fire.

Fire is the only answer.

Srsly, man. That sucks. Hope you can clean it up good.

 

[Walker]

i suggest talking to the_bird. This same sort of sh!t (pun fully intended) happened to him a few months ago.

 

[dogtailale]

http://www.odoban.com/

 

[the_bird]

i suggest talking to the_bird. This same sort of sh!t (pun fully intended) happened to him a few months ago.

Yup. Smell dissipates before too long, at least it did for us. Unfinished basement, so it all kind of gets absorbed into the concrete. I ended up dumping about a gallon of bleach on the floor and mopping it around, that helped a lot.

We ended up having pretty major issues, needed to get a fair amount of plumbing work done. We'd had a couple sewer backups, the plumbers would come and clear out our main line. One time it was tree branches (cut down the tree), the next time I'm not sure.

This last time, they just weren't able to get it clear. Pulled out ever monster tool they had, huge-ass motorized snakes. Basically came down to - they knew where the problem was, and were going to have to cut it out.

Which meant I got to jackhammer the floor.

They came back out the next day, and they cut out a "whole house trap." Basically, the old technology when houses first got indoor plumbing was to install a big trap on the main sewer line, rather than traps on each fixture. Totally redundant with traps on the toilets and on the sinks and all of that now, and against code for probably... oh, seventy years.

And, this trap had accumulated years and years of sand and dirt and crap that had all formed basically into concrete, everything had settled and compacted in this trap. They cut it out, gave me clean new PVC, a straight line with proper access to the drains, and gave me a bill for $570, which I though was fair for the hours and hours of work they put in.

So, yeah, pain in the royal ass. But, with a lot of bleach, the smell dissipated within a day or two - but again, my basement floor is raw concrete. Threw out a lot of stuff that had been sitting in the water, old shop rags and stuff like that. But, it didn't take that long for the smell to abate.

 

[JewBrew]

Happens to me at least once a season. For carpet put down baking soda. For the concrete pit containing the sewer clean out I use pinsol straight. For gross debris put on a glove.

 

[beerand420]

The only thing that helped for me was about 5 gallons of citrasolve cleaner and tons of water and elbow grease and I swear I can still smell that stink again when the floor gets wet in certain areas of our basement.

Our's backed up pretty bad about 2 years ago due to one clog and one collapsed pipe, the problem isn't still 100% resolved. My wife thought I had the stomach flu or something when she finally said ok, there something going on in the basement. Downstairs we went and discoverd about 6 inches of sludge covering the entire floor. We had the sewer line scoped and discovered that a tree root had penetrated the sewer line about half way from the house to the street. That was problem 1. Worse, the cast iron pipe running under our basement floor had rotted / rusted out all along the bottom, make it mostly useless it was pushing more dirt / mud into the main line than anything else. Apparenetly all the years of the sewer being partially blocked, caused a partial backup under our house for many years and this 9 foot section of pipe literally had no bottom to it, sewage was just going into the dirt causing the floor to heave, compounding the problem further because now this rotten pipe under the basement floor didn't have the drainage angle required to ever completely drain, so it rusted / rotted into pieces. Thankfully this was a pipe from the kitchen appliances so it was grey, not black water on this one. I ended up using a concrete saw to cut the basement floor out, above the problem pipe and replaced that one myself thanks to tool rental from home depot. I think I probably puked 6 times during that fun project. I haven't had the main line heading out to the street replaced yet, but did cut down the tree that caused the damage about 5 months ago. I was quoted a price of $12,000 for the job to replace the main line from my basement to the street and to replace the rest of the sub basement pipes that I didn't mess with. 570 dollars is an incredible deal for any major plumbing work. I still find concrete dust from time to time in my basement, the horrific smell went away after about a month, but still sometimes when I mop that floor it comes back to a small degree. I've been lurking here for a bit, thought this was as good a thread as any to jump in on and say hello

 

[the_bird]

Well, welcome!

I love my plumbers, I just wish I didn't have to call them as often as I do (they were at the house today, figuring out why I've got no hot water) They know I'm a little handy, so they had me rent the jackhammer myself and dig out the drain to save them time (and me $$). We thought that the problem was probably what you ended up having - a pipe with a big-******** in it, but the pipe was intact, it was just that damn useless trap.

The tree we had cut down (the problem a year or so ago, unrelated to the trap) was a big-ass white birch that the previous owners stupidly, stupidly planted three feet from the foundation. Thank god there was never any damage to the foundation, but cripes! Felt real good to chop that into firewood!

Incidentally, I love living in a small town; not only do my plumbers (whose shop is a quarter-mile down the street) make emergency calls and not rape me on the bill, I get a huge-ass tree cut down and they only charge me $250. Not that I'm bragging

 

[BulldogBrewer]

For the smell, you might try bring a 1/2 and 1/2 solution of vinegar and water to a boil with a few lemons in it, take it down there and let the steam fill the air.

After smoking out my house once or twice, this helps with getting smells out of the air.

 

[passedpawn]

what's a basement? Sure wish I had one of those things.

 

[tallybrewer]

Shove some whole cascade hops up each nostril & rock on!

 

[BeantownR6]

you should get a Hep A shot if you came in contact with the sewage backup asap. im no doctor but was at a construction site the other day where some workers had a sewage pipe break and came in contact with it. first thing the super made them do is go get the shot! might want to look into it.

 

[Shooter]

Is this a job that is too tough for Febreeze?

If so, you could try Simcoe hops. I read on the internet that Simcoe hops make beer taste like grapefruit, might be worth a try here!

Otherwise, go with the fire option. It's a good solution to almost any problem.

 

[Frankfurtvr4]

That stinks.