Sewer Problem

Way back on July 13, I was doing laundry and noticed that the water was not draining out of the washing machine. Then I saw that there was water backed up in our laundry tub. I called to Joe and the moment he saw it he suspected that we had a blockage in our sewer. Thus began our saga of trying to get our sewer fixed.

First, Joe tried to use an auger in our crawl space to open up the blockage. After that didn't work he called a few different plumbers and finally one came out to the house the next night. Roto Rooter tried but couldn't get anywhere because their auger was too big to fit in the crawl space and our bathroom to try to clean the pipes. Joe then made some calls to see about having someone come out and dig up the yard but the average quote was around $1400, way out of our budget.

So Joe did what he does best, he went after the problem himself and rented a machine to dig up our yard and look for the blockage himself. Here's a picture of Joe as he began the dig.

It was hard to watch him digging up our front yard since it was such a nice yard. It was one of the reasons we bought the house...really nice curb appeal. But it became an eye sore overnight!

That night I went to my parents' house with Ben so we could shower and use their plumbing. You don't realize how much you take for granted with running water: showers, using the toilet, brushing your teeth, making bottles for the baby.

The next day, I left Ben with my mom and I went up to the house with my dad to see if we could help. I ended up taking video of Joe and his dad, my dad, and Joe's friends Randy and Stuey as they found the blockage and fixed it. Unfortunately, blogger doesn't let me put up videos so I don't have any pictures of the outcome. But in the end, they had to dig about 7 feet down at the edge of where our property meets the street. It turned out that most of our sewer line had been replaced at some point except for the last few feet before meeting up with the county line. Of course that's where some roots had grown through the piping and caused the back up. Luckily though they were able to get it fixed and we were able to use our sewer again that night.

The down side though was that our front yard ended up looking like this:

Eventually we got some grass seed down and we finally have a green yard again. Although, whatever seed we bought did not actually match the existing grass so our curb appeal is still not 100%. And the new grass is growing much faster that the old grass so Joe's having to cut it more often.

Oh the joys of owning a home!!!