|
5 a.m. Monday morning
My daughter yelled from the bathroom, "Maaaaahhmmm. The toilet's making funny noises!" Asleep, I mumbled, "Flush it."
A second later, "Now it's flooding!" At that point I leaped out of bed fully awake. Amazing how that works.
"Get towels!" I ordered as I looked in dismay at the mess. I turned off the water then used towels to soak up the overflow, which fortunately was just water. I energetically attacked it with the plunger without success. Being first thing in the morning, and not making any headway, I decided to go to the gym, work out, then stop by the local home improvement store to pick up a super duper plunger and a snake.
Home again, I tried the plunger...the type with the snout for extra air pressure. Still no movement. Not good. Moving on to the next tool in my arsenal, I inserted the deluxe toilet auger. That didn't work either.
The only thing left to do was call Carl, the handyman. Carl is great. He's a licensed general contractor, a great Mr. Fixit, and a decent guy to boot. Within an hour and a half Carl was standing in the bathroom assessing possible courses of action. For the next hour, he tried attacking the blockage from both the stack (the vent pipe) and the oddball clean out using both the snake and his pressure jet attached to my hose. All we succeeded in doing was pushing the offending blockage further down the line. Finally, he gave me the bad news.
11 a.m.
"Looks like you'll have to call a plumber
After the plumber: Lessons learned
The first obvious lesson is that anyone old enough to yell that the toilet is overflowing should know how to turn off the water supply to the toilet. Show the kids, the babysitter, and grandma.
Other than the obvious inconvenience of having a major plumbing problem crop up out of nowhere and having bow out of work for the day, I was reminded again that there's a lot about my house that I take for granted. Finding out where the clean out is important, as was the emphasis on precisely what can go down the drain and what can't. As Pat and Carl emphasized, toilets take toilet paper, but nothing else. If you don't already know how your plumbing lines work, make a diagram. It can come in handy when you need to make repairs or hire a plumber.
The moral of the story....
"Before you make your problem worse, just call 0800 Plumber first."
| 
