Sunday, January 25, 2009

Handy neighbors


It's great to have handy neighbors. This past Friday night, wife and I were heading to bed. We both flushed the toilets at the same time, and they didn't go down. It was midnight and we are both attempting to plunger the toilets. Finally, I declare that we must have a backed up sewer and it would need to wait until the morning.
We had a backed up sewer line about six years back. We'd built onto the house and the back part of the house, didn't drain very well. I'd rented a sewer snake and attempted to clean the four inch sewer myself. I didn't have much luck then.
So Saturday morning, I get out a wrench and crack open one of the sewer clean outs. Yes, it was full of water still.
I've got a shop with two old cars in it, drum parts from building drums, and tools from three major building projects (1120 square foot shop, 920 square foot home addition, numerous out buildings). I've got a neighbor who has a shop and does gun smith work. Except for the last two years, he's been buying and rebuilding old Ford 8N tractors.


Our other neighbors, he works in electronic repair and they are constantly fixing cars, boats, homes over there.
I thought I'd remembered a plumbing truck over there, so I called them up to see which plumber they would recommend. They reply with "backed up sewer? We have that twice a year, due to the old septic system here. I'll be right over with a SEWER SNAKE and we'll see about unclogging it". I get out a garden hose and an extension cord and we proceed to snake out the sewer pipe. He estimated we were about 30 feet into the pipe and "bump"....we hit something. A moment later and WHOOSH....all the water vanished.
It's great to have neighbors willing to help each other.

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