Granted, there are a few irritants associated with this stop-gap solution. No, we can’t go in and out the back door at will while doing laundry, and yes, there’s a gap for flies, moths and mosquitoes to come flying through (though that could be solved by stuffing towel in the gap, I suppose), but when you’ve got to wash your daughter’s uniforms for school in the morning, this gets the job done in the semi-autonomous fashion intended for a washer and dryer.

After a lengthy troubleshooting session with my brother-in-law this evening, we remain unconvinced that I have a collapsed pipe. He wants to eliminate the possibility of a clog in the line either at the Y where the washer drain meets the main sewer line, or just a little further in the main line, itself. Since the first plumber didn’t try snaking the actual washer drain line, itself, we’re gonna do that tomorrow. I’m going to compare the cost of having someone come do both the washer line and the main line with the cost of renting an auger and doing it ourselves. Whichever way we go, if I still am stopped up after that, then I’m going to shell out the $250 for the plumber dude to come back and run his camera down the line so we can see what’s what and where – exactly.

I still may have to spend big money and dig…but then again…the hose is workin’ pretty good…

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Had to Go Hillbilly With It, After All

Not so for me, I’m afraid. Either there’s nothing stuck in the trap in that pipe, or I can’t get a tight enough seal when I try to put the Shop Vac hose in the hole to suck whatever it is out of there.

Part of the problem is there’s about 8 inches of rigid plastic at the attachment end of the Shop Vac hose and I’m trying to stick it in a drain hole with about 5 inches of clearance above it. Thus, I can’t get the right angle on it and the rigid plastic doesn’t bend. I did get about 2-3 cups of clear water, but no ball of lint, sock or other obstruction.

I did, however, find a hole in the drywall through which a clean-out cap is visible. Hmmmm….I don’t think I’m gonna have any better time with the Shop Vac hose there than I did up where the washer drain hose goes, but I’m gonna give it a whirl.

Then, before I call my brother-in-law back, I’m going to see if I can get a wire coat hanger through the trap. I so wish I had x-ray vision so I could see what my problem is and where. But I don’t, and I can’t, and I’m trying hard to resist the urge to cut away the sheet rock, even though I know how to put it back.

Looks like there’s a good chance some real labor will be occurring around here on Labor Day.

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I Could Give My Washer Drain Line a Hickey If I Could Get the Right Angle On It

Well, they sent the same 15-bricks-shy-of-a-load guy that they sent last year, but I figured, “No problem, he’s just gotta get the ball of lint or whatever it is built up in there out…he did it last year, he can do it again.”

Have you noticed that I am overly optimistic by nature?

Dude comes knockin’ at the front door when he was done, and since I was on a conference call, I just waved him in and held up the check I had written for him so he could be on his way. He motioned that he didn’t want the check and needed to talk to me. Great. So, I told the peeps on the conference call to hang tight a few minutes while I talked to him.

He proceeds to tell me that he was not only unable to clear my drain line, but that I must have a collapsed pipe under the house somewhere because his snake came back with mud on the end of it. He was going to have to call the office and have them send out a different guy, probably Tuesday, since Monday is Labor Day.

I sent him on his way, finished up the conference call and called the office myself. Given that I’d talked to Sara (the office manager) several times already trying to work out the logistics of getting someone here on the Friday before a holiday weekend, she already knew that I was not going to be happy to wait ’til Tuesday, so she sent her ‘best plumber’ over right away.

Mr. Best Plumber arrived, and to be fair, he was really nice, really knowledgeable, and really patient with my endless questions. His prognosis was not so nice: “Uh, well, ma’am…if you’ve got a collapsed line under there, I’d really recommend we just bypass it and run a new line over here to your sewer main. We can redirect your sink drain while we’re at it, since both your washer drain line and your sink drain line run under your deck, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want us tearing that up, right? Right…well, to divert the two lines, you’re looking at $1,700.”

Gulp.

After I exhaust him with all the questions I can possibly think of – all directed toward avoiding spending $1,700 – I thank him, take my copy of his written estimate and send him on his way.

Plumber dude needs to put the crack pipe down if he thinks I’m gonna cough up $1,700 to avoid wet socks. Especially on the word of Mr. 15-Bricks-Shy-of-a-Load who assumes I’ve got a collapsed line, but doesn’t know for sure.

Uhhh…no. I may be female and I may not be an expert in plumbing, but let me tell you what – I’ll duct tape the 27 ft. vacuum hose from the pool to the drain hose on my washer and run that sucker out my kitchen window and down to the access cap for my sewer main before I’ll cop a case of the “Okie Doke” and shell out $1,700 on a “maybe” collapsed pipe. Who do these jokers think they’re dealing with, anyway??!!

But before I even go hillbilly like that, I have other resources available to me that I’ll tap first. Like Baby Sis’ super-handy, Master Electrician, Knows-Something-About-Every-Damned-Thing-Imaginable hubby, for one.

After talking with him last night, I’m off to Wal-Mart to buy a Shop-Vac to implement his first idea, just as soon as my kids return with my car.

Stay tuned…

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Plumber Dude Needs to Put the Crack Pipe Down

Well, Sweet Pea was here that weekend, but it did not stop the manual labor efforts in the backyard. While Second Son and I continued work on building gates for the deck, Sweet Pea and PDD went swimming in the kiddie pool:

Sweet Pea and PDD Makin' Do 'Til the Big Pool is Ready

Tuesday after work, Oldest Son had one of his co-workers climb the neighbor’s tree and cut down the branches that were severely overhanging the pool:

Overhanging Limbs Removed

Which created a different kind of mess in the pool:

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

The next day, Oldest Son cut up the branches and he and I took another load of branches and debris to the dump (we borrowed Patsy’s truck that afternoon.)

The new pool liner I had ordered arrived, and we were just about done with repair and cleanup in the yard, so we headed into the last weekend of May hitting the homestretch. Second Son and I worked all day Friday. He shoveled out 5 wheelbarrow-loads of some of the best mulch I’ve ever seen (3 years worth of leaves, sticks, rain water and sunshine’ll do it!) and cut up the old liner into pieces we could get out of the pool and into another borrowed truck’s bed to take to the dump. I cleaned out the walkway (which had been previously plugged up with all kinds of stuff in an effort to block the dogs from getting out) on the driveway side of the house, so we had a nice load for the dump, yet again.

The Best Mulch In Town

After the dump, we went to the pool place to buy the new pump, hoses, vacuum and other equipment we needed. We determined upon inspection that the filter was intact and didn’t need to be replaced; we just needed to replace the sand in it, so while we still had a truck, we made this run.

I knew what I was in for, but I’m tellin’ ya – you should have seen Second Son’s face when they told me the total: $465.75. He said, “Dang! Mom! And we haven’t even bought chemicals yet!”

“Ummm…exactly, son,” I thought to myself.

While we were out, we went by Lowe’s and got a replacement blade for Second Son’s lawn mower, and by the time we got back home, we were whipped. We installed the new pump and replaced the sand in the filter and agreed we’d tackle the installation of the new liner in the morning. We still had to level the sand floor before we could put the new liner in, and neither of us had the oomph left to do that, so we called it a day.

Saturday we spent a couple hours fine-tooth-combing the sand floor for sticks, pecan shells and any other sharp objects that could put holes in the new liner and then started on the leveling. We had to borrow tools from the neighbor to remove the return valve and had to cut away some branches where the shrubs alongside the pool were trying to grow into the coping on the east side of the pool wall, but by mid-afternoon, we were ready to put the new liner in.

The New Liner

It only took us about half an hour to install the liner, even in the face of having to start over once because we were skewed by about two feet. When Oldest Son came home from work, he found us laying – fully clothed – on the floor of the pool with two water hoses (one from the back of the house, and one from the spigot on the front of the house) snaking back and forth spraying us with water. We didn’t care. We had a pool again!

It took most of the night to fill the pool, so we had to wait until Sunday for our first real swim.

PDD, Second Son and Oldest Son Taking the First Swim of the Season, 2009

I went back to the pool place for the chemicals Sunday afternoon. We don’t use chlorine in our pool because it’s so hard on our skin and it’s such a pain in the butt to maintain. In previous years, we’ve used Baquacil, but it’s fairly expensive, particularly in the beginning of the season. So this year we’re trying a different line of non-chlorine chemicals called Blue Elegance. I spent $75 yesterday (Sunday) afternoon (instead of about $200) and we’re supposedly good for the next two weeks.

We’ll see…

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Manual Labor Continues…

So, since Dad had a doctor appointment in the city yesterday morning, I asked him if he would come here afterward and help me build a gate for the deck where the steps go down into the yard. Two and a half hours later, here is my new gate:

While at Lowe’s, I bought enough lattice to replace the lattice that’s come down out of the deck fence over the years, because as soon as we tested our new gate for canine containment, Cheerio promptly jumped from the yard, up over the shrubs that line the pool deck, between the 2×4′s that make up the deck fence (where lattice used to be) and trotted her happy ass around the pool deck, ready to hop over the fence again.

This is beginning to feel like an episode of Roadrunner and I’m the coyote at the moment.

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Project Canine Containment Continues…

Patsy & Second Son at IHOP

Because of all the rain we’ve had, we did not attempt to remove the old liner from the pool, so we’ll have a second dump run to do in the coming weeks, but we made significant progress on the reclamation of the backyard.

Overhanging limbs cleared from back fence.

Privet bush all trimmed and pretty.

Shrubs along the pool deck trimmed way back.

A flowering bush under my bedroom window.

This erratic job he’s got working with the landscaper dude does have its merits.

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Backyard Progress Report

We got started about 2:30pm and finished about 7:30pm – not bad for a bunch of amateurs.

Here is a video Baby Sis shot with my Flip:
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While the Cat’s Busy, The Mouse…

But this is not a story about socks. This is a story about plumbing. Plumbing that makes me instantly insane. Plumbing that, if I owned a gun, people would die over. My socks are just the trigger.

As some of you know, my house was transformed 3 years ago come May when we woke in the wee hours to fire and billowing smoke. That summer the house was gutted – literally – and rebuilt from the foundation up. We moved back in October 2nd and lived in relative bliss for several months.

The sock thing probably started that winter because I finally had my long-coveted ceramic floor in my kitchen. Words can’t begin to describe how I love that floor. But it is a tad nippy on bare feet in December. But fast foward a few more months to March-ish. Still nippy, but spring is on the way.

One evening after dinner, I was standing at the sink rinsing dishes and loading the dishwasher. The right side of the sink had begun to fill up with water because the garbage disposal needed to be run to chew up all the spaghetti I’d just scraped in there. Seconds after I turned on the switch, my sock-clad feet were wet and warm.

I looked down and chewed up spaghetti was spilling out of the cabinet beneath the sink. I opened the doors and to my horror saw the pipes laying on the floor and the contents of the disposal spewing at the opposite cabinet wall. It took me a few seconds to remember I still had the water and the disposal on.

In my sopping wet socks, I went for the phone to call my contractor. He talked me through putting everything back together – this time tight – and all was well again.

For another few months…

Then one day I flipped the switch…wet socks. AAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!

This time, I skipped the call to the contractor and fixed the pipes myself. And all was well again.

For another several months.

And the wet sock dance has continued…every few months, always a surprise. I have the cleanest kitchen sink cabinet west of the Mississippi, I guarantee you.

You might be wondering by now why I haven’t called the contractor back, or better yet – called a plumber to just come fix it. Mostly, it’s because it’s one of those things that, for the most part, is easily tolerated…

…except when the pipes come undone and I have wet socks again.

Then…oh then, my lovely Internets…I come undone.

I scream nasty words, I swear death and destruction on the world at large, I get just downright ignorant about it.

And then I put the pipes back, tighten ‘em up, clean up the mess, and I’m good for another few months.

But I feel my patience with this particular toleration running out. It happened again last week. It’s never a happy surprise, to be sure, but this is no kind of mess to be cleaning up with a finger you’re trying to figure out how to amputate, and it’s even less fun trying to play plumber.

So, I call my contractor prepared to get all over him like the white on the proverbial rice. I’m hot – spitting nails hot. And what do I get? His voice mail. AAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!

Then Saturday, he calls me back. He’s been in the hospital for two days. Chest pains. He’s only 40. But he promises me an end to wet socks by the end of next week.

As much as I hate wet socks, they beat the shit out of chest pains.

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Pretty Damn Tired of Wet Socks