Learn By Others Mistakes!

[megadodo]

When we moved to our current house nearly 20 years ago the survey revealed a dropped sewer pipe leading to the cesspit. The "drop" is near the end of a 70 foot run to the pit from the house. It has at this time every year started to back up and sometimes cause the drain inspection cover at the house end of the run to lift! This is is cue to stuff the drain rods down the pipe to clear the obstruction! Normally this is easily achieved and the drains run clear again. Occasionally it takes a little bit of effort to shift the blockage and even less occasionally I do it before the blockage occurs as preventative maintenance!!!!

So, come Saturday morning the first signs of dampness around the lid caused me to don my overalls, whack some gloves on and go and fetch the drain rods. This time it took a lot of pushing, shoving and swearing but eventually the drain ran freely again. Proud of my "job well done" I went to make a cup of tea to be greeted by a malodorous pong in the house.

What I had failed to remember was the new toilet installed at the far end of the house whose drain pipe meets the long run about 30 feet from the end of the main drain run. The hydraulic action of the drain rod had forced the dirty water down the new loo run and up a 12 foot stack and into my daughters bathroom!

There was sh1t and dirty water everywhere! . Luckily, both my wife and I saw the funny side and had to sit down for 10 minutes laughing ourselves stupid! An hour of hot soapy water, disinfectant and the wet and dry hoover had it all nice and clean again!

[Guest Alan_builder]

What a name you have for your story - MEGA DO DO

 

Not to rub salt or another substance into a serious topic, well it sounds like the advert "Every thing we transport is passed by you"!

 

One evening in the small hours the man came with his rods to unblock next door, I had called him as we had gases coming from our downstairs loo.

Well the neighbor from across the road some days later said he almost called the police because he thought we were having a noisy party. We have a communal sewer and there is a drop between the 2 drain covers next door.

Now for the best bit, I had to pay for the unblocking as I called the workers out! The £200 was not a problem but I had just been made redundant and it was up to me to collect an equal contribution from those using the sewer as per our deeds! You guessed the only person who would not contribute was the guy with the broken sewer pipe! The problem could occur every day and that I could not afford with my new circumstances.

 

Well many years later after watching many different guys unblock the drain on a regular basis, like once a month I can advise you :- its an up and under job! You always work from downstream. Use a big screw end to catch the paper which is the normal cause of a build up prior to the sewer fatty deposits growing on them.

 

So if you have some friends you want to get rid off invite them to your sewer party!

[megadodo]

Alan's post has reminded me of another effluent based story

The dangers of working from "below"!

My fathers house is joined to a communal "pit" that is in a neighbours garden. The over flow for that was above a river that runs through the area at about 12 feet up a 45 degree slope. It was a hot summer and the neighbour in whose garden the pit is, had complained that it was beginning to smell and my father had said he would "look into it" as he was the "pit" expert for the neighbourhood. He of course forgot until he was reminded by our neighbour mid dinner party one hot evening! Being quite drunk my father and several of his male guests said they would attend to it straight away. The rest of us watching from above on a bridge overlooking the river had the pleasure of seeing 4 drunk dinner jacket clad men struggling up a river bank to shove rods down the outflow! Eventually the blockage decided to move and at first a tube of solid brown much started to emerge from the pipe and it was at this point the 4 men realised what was about to happen but alcohol confused the situation and none got way before the tube turned to a shower of sh!t! The women folk of the party apart from one poh faced sober driver proceeded to further humiliate their husbands

[Guest peter2b2002]

we share our pit with the folk next door , no problem since thier son left home, don't know what he did but every 4 -5 weeks we had to stuff rods up the pit inlet pipe to clear a blockage, Since then I've been looking into why our surface water drains are backing up every time we have heavy rain (the pit out let and surface water drains join togther some where ), I found some smelly black liquid comming up 1/2 way down 1 of the fields ( the side paddock slopes down to a big ditch were a pipe comes out) so a big hole was dug (3ft down through clay) were I found a clay pipe that had cracked and filled whit soil, bingo I thought no problem as I had some spare clay pipes , fitted a new pipe , but there was only a small flow,(1) so I took out the new piece of pipe and suffed 30ft of rods back up steam untill I hit some thing, another deep hole was dug , same thing cracked pipe, repeat (1) then after another 20ft hit some thing else another hole dug, some one had been there bofore as the damaged pipe had some old bits of pipe on laid top, so far I have dug 3 more holes to repair some one elses bodges. Got to hand it to the guys who laid these pipes in the first place thogh, 400 yards through clay 3 ft down!!

peter2b

[Guest TerryBarry]

There are days when I'm glad we're on main drainage - even better now that the water company are responsible for the bit from my property to the sewer in the middle of the road.