I was planning on writing this installment about the COVID-19 crisis last Thursday. I never got to do it. Thursday afternoon we noticed that there seemed to be a backup from our sewage line into the main bathroom. The bathmat that covered the safety drain line was very wet. My wife put it on the edge of the bathtub. After doing that, she did not see any sign that there was a problem, She even flushed the toilet once again, but nothing came up from the safety drain.
Later that evening I was going to the smaller bathroom to brush my teeth. I stepped into the room and was quickly aware that the floor was flooded. Here, too, the small rug/bathmat was thoroughly soaked. It was too late to call our local plumber. We sent him a telephone message the following morning right after we woke up. He called back soon afterwards, and was on the scene only a short time later. The first place he went was to the manhole over the connection from our house to the main common sewage line. When he removed the cover he immediately saw the manhole was half filled with backed up sewage. Of course, a block in the main sewage line is not his, or our, problem. That needs attention from the local (county) government. I went directly back inside and called them. When I returned I mentioned that the level of sewage was well below the point where our house lines empty into the main line.
“Aha!”, he exclaimed, “Maybe there are two problems? One in the main line, and one in the house?”.
That was. indeed, what had happened. Our plumber worked on the house line and managed to clear it. The mess on the main bathroom floor drained away. Not so the mess in the small bathroom. It remained covered with water and filth. There was insufficient difference in height for everything to drain away as it had in the other room. Our local plumber, meanwhile, having cleared the house line, left the scene to take care of another call. Less than 15 minutes after he departed our phone rang. It was the maintenance man from the county. He was already on his way to us. When he arrived he saw the manhole behind our house. If there was a blockage, it had to be somewhere further down the line. My wife guided him to the location of the next manhole. That was, it seems, the location of the stoppage. He went to work and soon had things flowing again.
Meanwhile, I tackled the problem in the small bathroom. I threw the bathmats from both rooms into a bucket and then used a squeegee to push the water to the drain. It took several minutes. I used some fresh floor rags to complete the process of mopping up. They were added to the bucket. I took the whole bucket and dumped the contents into our washing machine. It was the first time I had to use the extended time for a “hygiene” clean. It took 2 hours to finish. Normal wash loads complete in just half that time. As soon as the wash finished I hung the items out in the sun. Fortunately, it was a dry, sunny, day. I brought everything in after about 3 hours. It was all dry. I folded the rags and put them away and returned the mats to their usual place in the bathrooms.
I was exhausted. No strength left to write about the next steps to returning to a new normal as the virus was waning.That will have to wait for another time.
Wetherhorn 