Well, this weekend's been a mixed bag....

[the_bird]

On the positive side, Pats beat Cinci pretty handily, and as a result I've got a six pack headed my way.

Also on the positive side, having a good run in my fantasy league.

On the decidedly LESS good-news front, I've got to jackhammer a big ass hole in my basement tomorrow. We've been having a metric ****-ton of issues with our main sewer line. Started last year - line clogged, everything backed up into our washing machine and slop sink. Plumbers came with their big-ass snake, found tree branches, told us to take down a tree that was in front whose roots were getting into the pipe.

So, that tree's now in pieces, stacked and waiting for winter.

So... same **** happens a few months ago. They come, fix it. Not sure what they found - wasn't there when they fixed it.

Fast-forward to Saturday morning, when I go downstairs to the unmistakable odor of... well, sewage. Same deal. Call them plumbers (love these guys; Saturday morning and they're at the house within an hour), they start cleaning it out again... and nothing's working. Finally, they bring out the BIG drain cleaner think (the anaconda of drain snakes), they tell me as they're lugging it down the stairs,

"Son, you better hope this works, 'cause if it don't we're all out of ideas..."

Finally, they get the line cleared... by taking out chunks of concrete. Seems that buried in the floor, the pipe has busted underneath the washer-dryer, now chunks of the floor are getting in the pipe.

So, their instructions to me are, we'll get it cleared for a little while, but you need to jackhammer out ALL of this floor around here so we can cut this out and give you some new cleanouts.

So, they leave, and everything is working... until tonight. Backed up again, which means I'm scrambling to get things caught up so I can take tomorrow and Tuesday off, jackhammer open a big ass hole in the floor, get them access to the pipes, and hope they can come back on Tuesday to fix me up for good.

Adding insult to injury, I don't even want to drink beer tonight because I'll either be pissing in the backyard or basically pissing in my slop sink!

Effin' a. I love me some power tools, but I ain't looking forward to renting a damn jackhammer.

Just venting. A very frustrating weekend. Going to bring the family to a hotel tomorrow, if we can't really ****, shower, and shave, it's kind of hard to stay in the house.

 

[Pappers_]

Good luck, Bird. We moved into a hotel for a few days a while ago when there was some work being done on the homestead - if you can get into the adventure of it, it can be fun.

And manly props to you for doing your own jackhammering. There's a joke there, but i'm just not finding it right now. In any case, good luck.

 

[Darwin18]

You can get the electric Jack hammers at United Rentals and they are pretty user friendly. Make sure you pickup a concrete saw so you can Jack out a definedarea. Also will help your back out.

Good luck. I never minded Jack hammering but I hated mixing bags of concrete by hand.

 

[sudbuster]

Or you could call some plumbers that have the equipment to do the job so you could do yours. Me thinks it'll cost about the same either way unless you take vacation days. Anyway, good luck on that job......

 

[the_bird]

Well, I've got plenty of vacation days, and have been working enough weekends where no one will care whether I take off for a day or two as long as my projects are taken care of. And, I can't stand the idea of paying someone else to do this. I'm sure these guys could do it, but they usually tell me to do the stuff they know I can do, and just handle the plumbing stuff. Just can't stand the idea of paying them $65 an hour (I think that's what they charge me) any more than I have to.

 

[sudbuster]

Gotcha. Good luck!

 

[Homercidal]

+1 on the concrete saw. It's a much better finish. And don't worry. A jackhammer is a bit of fun! (For a while). And chicks dig a guy with a jackhammer. I saw it on a diet Coke commercial.

 

[the_bird]

Do I *need* to rent a concrete saw, or will a masonry blade for my circ saw work OK? Don't care if I burn out the saw, it's a cheap Ryobi that I've been wanting to replace.

 

[TxBrew]

Peeing in the backyard is one of the highlights of drinking, not a reason to not do it.

Sorry you're having issues. If you get it all jack hammered out, I would love to see some pics.

 

[Walker]

Bird, if you were so full of ****, this wouldn't happen to your plumbing.

 

[the_bird]

I'll take some pics. Amazed, though, the slab... really wasn't much of a slab. Maybe an inch of real concrete, then gravel. Thinking they may have chintzed on the ol' c-ment back when the house was built.

So, the plumber stopped by - the bossman, and we're pretty sure we know what the problem is. There's no holes in the pipes - all solid, so that's good. No idea where the 'crete they found in the pipe came from - I saw it, didn't feel it, he has seen it before where powdered laundry detergent can form into a hard mass that looks like cement and causes problems...

.... and we don't use powdered laundry detergent, but we do use a fair amount of Oxiclean... ...

In any case, the core issue seems to be that we have a "whole house" trap. Basically, in addition to the traps under all the sinks, there's a trap like that, buried, for the whole system. Old-school. Totally redundant since all of the fixtures have traps. And, apparently against code for the better part of sixty or seventy years (he was thinking they were illegal when the house was built in 1942).

So, the issues that we've been having, each of the past three times have been at this trap, so they're going to take it out. He cleared it for me this one last time, everything drained and hopefully we'll be good to go for one more night (we were planning staying at a hotel). They'll be here bright and early and start billing me at 7:00. They'll take out the old trap, a lot of the old cast iron, the old cast iron vent that goes to the trap, all new traps and all of that. HOPEFULLY, this will resolve the problems once and for all.

But I ain't re-pouring the concrete for a little while....

 

[the_bird]

Pictures of the mess, and the whole-house trap that seems to be the root problem.