The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Mama said there’d be days like this. You get up on a sunny hopeful morn, you take your shower, brush your teeth, wash the breakfast dishes, toss in a load of laundry, help yourself to another cup of joe. You’re psyched for another day in the mine, just glad to be alive. You go back in the bathroom, get rid of those first two cups of caffeine … and hear the sink gurgling like a bad gargle. Odd, you think. The kitchen sink chimes in, a drain duet. Then you noticed the toilet water isn’t going down, it’s coming up!

What the …? And then you find the bathtub filling up … with … omigod! With what should never be in your bathtub.

Who ya gonna call? Crapbusters? Being a modern South Ender, I postpone my optimism and pull the shades down on the mocking sun. Ain’t no sunshine when the sewage comes home to roost, trust me. Then I go to my computer and google up Invasion of the Turds, pass up the first ads and go to the How-To and You-Tube and the Suicide Hotline. I pick the How-To. The Hotline will come later, I’m half certain, but it’s a last resort. I have the internet — I have a global support team.

I’m no novice to this plumbing paradox, I pretty much know the bad news that’s coming. I’m just hoping to find a glimmer of hope, some yahoo who sez check the toilet float, jiggle it, you’ll be good to go. My ‘team’ focuses instead on more likely and infinitely worse diagnoses: a plugged sewer line, a ruined drainfield or a full septic tank. Pick yer poison! The tank was pumped recently so I’m down to 2 options. I choose the only one I can fix myself — the line.

That was yesterday. I started at the tank and dug down, found the line a few feet down, then trenched back toward the house. An old growth forsythia thwarted my forward progress. I sawed it off, whacked at its roots, chained it to my truck and jerked it out like a bad wisdom tooth. Sure I felt bad. For me! Its roots were what had clogged my line where the pipes had broken. Iron to clay to PVC. It was like an archeological dig through plumbing eras, Roman to modern.

Today I joined the new pipes, ran some serious water as a test then filled the grave. I tell you, there’s a damn good reason to keep the old outhouse!

For any of you following these posts — and I sincerely apologize — you know I ignored the pleadings of my better half to hire a bathroom remodeling company to tear out our old shower and install a new one. I did this partly because the remodelers I called were busy until the following year or two but to be honest, because I’m mule-headed, one of those husbands who thinks he can handle a little Do-It-Yerself without bringing Catastrophe upon our house. Okay, full disclosure, I’ve had some close calls. Once, when building the house, I removed a couple of interior studs to make room for a Russian fireplace, what turned out to be very structural load bearing studs. Within a half minute the upper story was sagging into the first floor, 2×4’s were bending precipitously and yeah, Mr. DIY was nervous. Okay he was scared to death the entire house was going to collapse before he could shove some hastily cut studs and pound them into place with a maul. And yeah, I’ll admit at one point I considered the necessity of evacuating the house before I was killed by my own stupidity.

Lessons have been learned. Almost burning down my studio working on a 60 amp breaker that I grounded inadvertently … okay, another close call, smoldering walls and a call to the volunteer fire department, another instructional exercise. Although not as quickly learned when I wired a 240 volt heater incorrectly some years later and wire nuts were melted with scorch marks on the wall. But … I was younger then and far less wise than I am in my advancing old age, forget that maxim about old dogs and new tricks. We’re talking humans.

But I digress. Let’s fast forward to the new shower Karen didn’t want me installing myself. Took awhile but got it in okay. Until we noticed the leaks coming in from … somewhere. No big deal, just go back and caulk a little more. Day after day, the same thing, mystery leaks coming from god only knows where. A month went by and it became apparent to even me that this new shower might have to be torn out and find out if that leak was from the drain pipes, maybe I forgot to glue them together, about the only thing left as the culprit. Of course it also occurred to me, and I’m sure Karen too, that the second time through might be similar to the first time through. This, dear reader, is Plumbing 101. A little like quantum physics where the usual laws of the universe are skewed by the observance of the physicist….

Desperate troubles call for desperate measures. Drinking, for one. Which of course didn’t really offer help. In the end, out of solutions and out of time too, I did what I always do in these situations, just try anything at all no matter how insane. What have you got to lose? Maybe a flooded house, okay, I’ll give you that.

Two days ago I bought some stop-leak gunk used to seal up holes in radiators in cars and trucks. Last time I used that stuff I plugged my Rambler’s heater completely. So I know it works, just sometimes maybe a little too well. I rammed a towel down the shower drain to partially plug the water from draining too fast, then little by little poured the entire bottle of gunk down the hole. I know, I know, it was the act of a half crazed plumbing victim facing no other options than tearing out the shower and starting over, probably doing exactly the same thing and expecting better results.

Let me say in conclusion, the leak has stopped. Or leaks. Yes, Virginia, there are miracles. Even though they are essentially unheard of in the world of plumbing. And once again, by the skin of my teeth, I can say I averted what should have been a DIY catastrophe. But admittedly not without psychic scars. You out there looking for a Plumbing Influencer such as myself, trust me, do not try this in your own home!

Let me review the previous episode of Plumbing Hell in case some of you missed it, ignored it or, like me, probably tried to forget it. We had a leak in the upstairs bathroom’s sink, enough to run down through the ceiling into the basement bathroom. No big deal, you’re probably thinking, but if that’s what you were thinking, then I know you are the type of person who dials his cellphone for the closest plumber to come out and fix the problem. For us on the South End, that has never been an option. The trip out and back costs more than whatever was wrong in the first place.

No, we do what our predecessors here in the nettle jungles of the backwash have always done. We shudder, we perspire, we break into palpitations and finally, after an appropriate procrastination, we take a good hard belt from straight from the whisky bottle and without bothering to wipe our chins, we bore in. Tools come out, the cursing starts, the whimpering follows. If you recall, I had no more begun to work on that sink when an obstinate inlet valve snapped off the hot water line, spewing 40 gallons of a fast draining hot water heater onto the floor until I finally got a bucket or actually two under the floodwaters.

Yesterday I reassembled the entire kit and caboodle, what we semi-professional plumbers refer to as the ‘whole shitaree’. Got the valve on okay, lifted the hundred pound century old pedestal sink into position, got the drain pipes reassembled and voila, turned on the taps. And yeah, the same stupid leak was still there. Plus a new one. Sure, I cursed, I cast blame near and far, I wept. But … I knew this was the probable, not the possible, outcome. Plumbing is not a one step venture. It is a journey of a thousand miserable steps.

I’m not going to bore you with a litany of what followed; suffice it to say, the procedure was reversed, more parts were disassembled and since they are a century old, small washer screws inside the brass faucets crumbled and had to be drilled out. Of course the screw threads had dissolved with time too. An experienced hand at plumbing like myself, KNOWS this will happen. It’s why he didn’t replace them the last time even though they were leaking then. This time, however, I dared to tread where others dread, a motto I may copyright for when I incorporate my plumbing bizness.

I’m into the third day, three or four trips to the hardware store, and no, I haven’t rehooked up the water yet. What’s the rush? The mizzus is out of town galavanting in New Orleans, so what if I have company coming in two days. Plenty of time for a pro to make the necessary repairs, clean up the damage, put away the tools and pretend that all is well in the homeland. Picture of idyllic rural living, eh? If things don’t go well, and you and I both know it’s looking iffy as of this moment, the guests can do what I do, wash their hands in the bathtub, brush their teeth over the toilet. At least I’m not making them use the outhouse.