My husband called on his cell phone Sunday as he was taking his daily walk on the road past our front lawn.
“There’s sewer water on the lawn,” he said.
I went and checked and ,indeed, a clay chimney-shaped pipe that protrudes from the lawn was spilling out dirty water.
I knew what this was. This happened once before, maybe six or seven years ago. Tree roots invade the pipe and cause blockages. You snake it out and the water goes through. But I couldn’t remember who did the work for us
The next day, I called a plumbing company we’ve used before that advertises in the yellow pages as handling main sewer lines. I had no idea who to use.
The guy came. He tried to pry open the sewer cover at the base of our driveway near the road, but couldn’t get it open. He tried to clear out a white plastic PVC pipe that protrudes from the lawn some 30 feet up from the base of the driveway but couldn’t. He noted another protruding plastic pipe 50 feet up from the first pipe.
“Are you sure this isn’t a septic system?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “It’s city water and city sewer.”
He said, “I can try snaking out the line, but I have only 110 feet of snake. It’s maybe 175 feet from where the water is leaking out by the house to the sewer cover at the base of the drive. If the blockage is located more than 110 feet away, I’ll have to call another man and a truck.”
I jerry-rigged a heavy-duty extension cord for him from the back deck to overflowing clay pipe. He hooked up the snake –a spirally metal tube 8 feet in the length –to an electric-powered drill, and began feeding it down the throat of the pipe. The black water spilled out as he rotated the snake and drew it out to add more lengths of tubing. But the water did not go down.
I watched him, as he lengthened the snake to maybe 40 feet. He kept feeding and rotating the tubing, but the water didn’t budge.
“This isn’t working,” he said. “Too many roots in the pipe. You’ve got to replace the pipe in the ground under the lawn. It will take two men and a backhoe.”
“How much will that cost?” I asked.
“Six thousand,” he said. “I can do it this week.”
“I have to talk to my husband,” I said. The time-honored ploy to avoid committing to repair people.
I talked to my husband. He didn’t know any more than I did.
“Should we get another bid?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“Well, I guess we better get it done,” he said. “We don’t want to pollute.”
I set up the appointment to dig up the lawn and replace the pipe for the following week, since I was going to Boston on Wednesday to go to my sister’s colorectal surgical consult. Nora, who is an ovarian cancer survivor, has a blockage in her intestines. (Another blockage of waste material … Is the universe trying to tell me something?) She’s been living on liquid nutrition administered through a tube and a port in her body, but she wants to get the intestines unblocked so she can eat real food again.
As I sat in the waiting room with Nora’s husband John, a real mechanical whiz, I told him the story of the sewage seepage and the fact that I was going to replace the sewer line under the lawn.
He said, “ I wouldn’t do that. I would try another company to snake out the root blockage.”
John, who helps take care of our summer house properties in Northern New York, had just gone through the process of snaking our sewer line for the summer house in the village of Cape Vincent. (Once again:Is the universe trying to tell me something?) . Our summer house basement had backed up with two feet of water. John called a company that snaked out the sewer line. He watched the water in the basement recede immediately,
Nora got good news from the surgeon about the practicality of unblocking her intestines. I went home to cancel the appointment to put in a new main sewer line and to call another company to try snaking once again.
The woman from Roto Rooter went online to look at the outlines of my property ( and my long front lawn and driveway) on Google Earth.
“I’ve got a gut feeling we can fix this,” she said after hearing my story about the failed snaking. “It sounds to me like the first plumber was looking for a big-paying job. I’ll send out my guys tomorrow morning, so they have plenty of time to investigate and act.”
An hour later, a Roto Rooter truck pulled up in my driveway.
“I thought you were coming tomorrow,” I said.
He said, “ I wanted to scope the place out today.”
I showed the Roto Rooter man the metal sewer cover in the front of the driveway, the two plastic PVC pipes pressed into the front lawn, and the clay pipe overflowing with dirty water very close to the house.
The Roto Rooter guy shone a flashlight down one of the PVC pipes in the ground.
“This looks like a clean-out pipe,” he said, referring the the pipe one could send a snake down to clear out blockages. “But it should have a cap to block debris from getting into it.”
“We’ve owned this house 17 years, and these plastic things have never been capped,” I said.
He yelled into the PVC pipe. “Listen to that echo,” he said.
The Roto Rooter man got a hammer from his truck and asked me to bang on the metal sewer cover at the base of our driveway.
I banged, and he put his ear down very close to the PVC pipe 30 feet from the sewer cover.
“I can hear the banging through the pipe,” he said, “That means there’s no blockage between the sewer cap and the first PVC pipe, because a blockage would interfere with sound transmission.”
“Try the second PVC pipe,” I said. I liked being part of the mystery-solving team and I like banging on metal.
He put his ear down by the second PVC pipe, and I banged on the sewer cover. Eighty feet from my banging, he could clearly hear the sound through the pipe, which meant that long stretch of pipe was clear.
“So the blockage is between the second PVC pipe and the clay pipe,”said the Roto Rooter guy. “ No more than 30 feet. That’s good news. We’ll snake that area tomorrow.”
We were saying farewells when the Roto Rooter guy said he wanted to try one more thing. He took, his 8-foot length of spirally metal snake tubing and he jabbed it by hand into the throat of the clay pipe where the dirty water was spilling. He jabbed and he stirred by hand, no power drill. In no more than 15 seconds, the water dropped down in the pipe. We moved to the next clean-out pipe—the PVC pipe 30 feet away-- and we could hear water rushing through. The clog was broken.
“You have magic hands,” I said..
I suggested he come back the next day to do a thorough snake-out anyway. He said he would bring his pressurized water blower to move any debris in the pipe down to the city sewer line. And he would cap the two PVC clean-outs.
I called my brother-in-law John to tell him the story and thank him for his cautionary advice.
“Call me anytime,” he said.
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