However, unlike most Americans we did not spend the next day with the bargain hunters; we battled a clog in the drain to the septic tank because water came out of the shower drains when the washing machine emptied. We fed a snake and then a garden hose down the former kitchen sink drain. Mom finally told me (after I'd lived in the house 33 years) that they'd moved the kitchen because there wasn't enough pitch and the drain clogged up several times that first year. Their solution worked as this was the first time I'd had any problem with the drain clogging. But WE were unsuccessful. Our snake and hose couldn't go far enough.
The next day we decided to look for a clean out (or put one in), and found it after vacuuming a few gallons of fill dirt out from around the shut-off valve under the front porch, a brick patio. Termites had eaten the plywood that held back the dirt. It didn't help at all that our stack of replacement doors rests against the wall over the hole.
'Finding' and 'getting into' are not the same thing. None of our tools were big enough to fit the end plug. We called Laing's Hardware in Dawson (still open as it was before noon) and Jim told us they had no tool too, and we may as well make our own. Bond set to work designing and building the tool (upside down in the picture above) out of plastic 'wood' screwed to the ends of 2, 2x4's with a dowel handle.
We got the plug out but not the clog.
Until we rent a powered snake, we 'll put corks in the ground floor showers and keep laundry loads small. Perhaps the clog will fix itself......
We are still puzzled why the darned thing backed up all of a sudden in this year of drought. Water has come up in the lowest shower twice during heavy rains when the ground was too saturated for the drain field to work (BOTH ALSO DURING HOLIDAYS!) And we'd had the tank pumped out one time, just six months ago.
In my research I found that the day after Thanksgiving is Roto-Rooter's biggest day of the year for emergency calls. Looks like we WERE having the same kind of Black Friday as many Americans...or was that a "Brown Friday"?
