Honey, do you smell something?
We live in a three story house, with a garage, utility room, and guest room with bath on the first floor, living room, dining, and kitchen on the second floor, and two bedrooms on the third floor.
This morning I woke up, dressed, and went downstairs to go to work. I reached the second floor and noticed a nasty odor. Down the stairs to the first floor I went, where I discovered . . . raw sewage.
The tub was nearly full and the toilet had overflowed. The bathroom floor was covered, the carpet in the guest room about 50% soaked, and the laundry had a nice sheen on the floor as well. The stench was horrendous.
I raced back up stairs to tell my wife to stop running any water and pulled out the yellow pages. It is startling how many contractors there are that specialize in cleaning up sewage spills. This must be more common than I could have guessed. Anyway, confronted with an array of options, I settled on DiR-DECON, because they promised to clean up after “suicides, homicides, human decomposition, accidents, gross filth (whatever that is), and sewer.” I figured with that resume, my little spill wouldn’t look bad to these people. While I waited on the cleanup crew, I also called Atomic Plumbing to come out and see what was up with the pipes.
The cleanup “crew” turned out to be one guy in a white van with a trailer. He took a look around, I signed a work order, and he put on a biohazad suit, pulled a blue hose out of his van and started sucking up the sewage. It turns out that sewage can’t be simply cleaned off something porous, because you can’t get the bacteria out. So all the wood base and shoe mold had to be removed, and the carpet torn out. The vinyl flooring had to come up because the water had worked its way underneath. Everything was bagged as hazardous waste, and taken to an incinerator. It took this guy about six hours to vacuum up the sewage, tear out all the finishes, and decontaminate the exposed floor slab.
Meanwhile, out in the yard, the plumbers (there were two of them) arrived and began snaking out my main sewer line. They got out almost to the sidewalk, but the snake would go no further. That was where the digging commenced.
A little ways down they uncovered the top of a city cleanout that had been buried. Below that, at the point where my line connected to the cleanout, it had cracked off, allowing dirt into the sewer line and clogging it up. That was pretty easily fixed, and this time I had them install the cleanout at grade level so I could find it again in the future.
Missed a whole day of work, but at least the house doesn’t smell like ass anymore. And at least the house isn’t located in New Orleans, either. So I'm not really complaining.
Plumbing repairs: $667.70
Cleanup: $1785.84
No sewage in the house: Priceless.
This morning I woke up, dressed, and went downstairs to go to work. I reached the second floor and noticed a nasty odor. Down the stairs to the first floor I went, where I discovered . . . raw sewage.
The tub was nearly full and the toilet had overflowed. The bathroom floor was covered, the carpet in the guest room about 50% soaked, and the laundry had a nice sheen on the floor as well. The stench was horrendous.
I raced back up stairs to tell my wife to stop running any water and pulled out the yellow pages. It is startling how many contractors there are that specialize in cleaning up sewage spills. This must be more common than I could have guessed. Anyway, confronted with an array of options, I settled on DiR-DECON, because they promised to clean up after “suicides, homicides, human decomposition, accidents, gross filth (whatever that is), and sewer.” I figured with that resume, my little spill wouldn’t look bad to these people. While I waited on the cleanup crew, I also called Atomic Plumbing to come out and see what was up with the pipes.
The cleanup “crew” turned out to be one guy in a white van with a trailer. He took a look around, I signed a work order, and he put on a biohazad suit, pulled a blue hose out of his van and started sucking up the sewage. It turns out that sewage can’t be simply cleaned off something porous, because you can’t get the bacteria out. So all the wood base and shoe mold had to be removed, and the carpet torn out. The vinyl flooring had to come up because the water had worked its way underneath. Everything was bagged as hazardous waste, and taken to an incinerator. It took this guy about six hours to vacuum up the sewage, tear out all the finishes, and decontaminate the exposed floor slab.
Meanwhile, out in the yard, the plumbers (there were two of them) arrived and began snaking out my main sewer line. They got out almost to the sidewalk, but the snake would go no further. That was where the digging commenced.
A little ways down they uncovered the top of a city cleanout that had been buried. Below that, at the point where my line connected to the cleanout, it had cracked off, allowing dirt into the sewer line and clogging it up. That was pretty easily fixed, and this time I had them install the cleanout at grade level so I could find it again in the future.
Missed a whole day of work, but at least the house doesn’t smell like ass anymore. And at least the house isn’t located in New Orleans, either. So I'm not really complaining.
Plumbing repairs: $667.70
Cleanup: $1785.84
No sewage in the house: Priceless.
posted by Kurt at
5:49 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home