The plumber has arrived! The pipes are going in!
So far, it is just the sewer and drain pipes, but those are important pipes. For example, below is a photo of a fully functional, non-plugged-up, brand new, connected-to-the-sewer, stand pipe for the washing machine.
Joy! Joy!
How can a drain for a washing machine be an event to celebrate? Let me explain.
In our old house, the stand pipe for our washing machine backed up on us and flooded the utility room. We found out (three plumbers later) that the laundry drain was a stand pipe that went into the slab and then into a dry well buried somewhere in the front yard (or under the slab). We are not sure where it was.
A dry well is a hole in the ground full of rocks. The theory is that the gray water from the clothes washer goes into the dry well where it leeches into the ground and harms nothing, leaving behind the lint and detergent and extra socks that have disappeared down the laundry drain.
Unfortunately, after 60 years, the hole was filled with lint and detergent and extra socks, and the dry well was used up. It could not be fixed. You see the proper way to fix a dry well is to dig it up, clean it out, and replace the rocks, then cover it up again….. and that is illegal now…. even if we could find it…. which we couldn’t.
The last plumber who “fixed” the laundry drain poured “Clobber®” down the drain to eat out the gunk. Clobber is concentrated sulphuric acid. Evidently, while it is illegal to clean out the well properly and replace it, it is perfectly legal to pour acid into the ground. Go figure.
The acid treatment unclogged the dry well enough that we could do one wash each day, but no more. So we have spent the last few years timing our washes around the seepage of gray water into the earth, the height of the water table and how many days since it last rained and so on and so on. PIA.
Also, while the plumber was pouring the acid into the standpipe, he slobbered sulphuric acid onto the concrete slab under the washer, and the acid ate a hole in the slab right under where the foot of the washing machine went. After that, the washing machine was perched on a board to keep the foot out of the hole. It rocked and rolled as it washed the clothes.
The rotted slab and the old stand pipe and the hidden, clogged dry well are now somewhere in Maine, and we have a brand new, fully functional, non-plugged-up, new, connected-to-the-sewer, stand pipe for the washing machine.
Imagine the joy.
We also have, in the upstairs bathrooms, two more pipes.
Those two pipes are destined to be connected to two fully functional, non-plugged-up, brand new toilets that will flush. That is a non-negotiable requirement that we handed to the architect; “toilets that flush”. These pipes may follow some torturous paths down to the basement main drain,
but, they go down to a brand new sewer connection that goes all the way out to the street.
The old sewer connection had tree roots in it and it had to be cleaned out once every year or so to keep raw sewage from backing up into the house. We knew that it was time to call the sewer guy when we flushed the toilet, and it gurgled and gave us back what we flushed. That was always an unpleasant surprise, and it usually happened during a blizzard or during a blistering heat wave.
The first time the backup happened to us was during a blistering heat wave. We did not know what was going on, so we called our regular plumber and he tried to puzzle out what was wrong. It was 97 degrees out and humid. After an hour or so of hard work he had made no progress and was covered with … um….. “matter”… as he called it… and his boss drove up and asked “How’s it going”.
He said,
“It is 97 degrees out and I am standing here with other people’s toilet paper all over my face. How do you think it is going? I love my job.”
I don’t think we ever saw that particular plumber again.
They eventually turned our case over to a sewer specialist, who cut out the roots that were growing into the pipe. He was subsequently called out multiple times to fix the problem. Once roots find a sewer pipe, they are persistent in their pursuit of their favorite…. um…. “matter”. They keep coming back. It was a steady income stream for the sewer guy.
But now we have a pair of brand new, fully functional, non-plugged-up, pipes to be connected to two brand new toilets that will flush.
Or else.
Our joy is unmeasurable.
Moving on to a less tacky subject, the tops for our bathroom vanities are here. Here is a photo.
They are made of granite, and will be lovely with their white, under-mount bowls sitting on their respective vanities next to the new toilets that will flush.
The other counter tops, the ones for the kitchen, are not ordered yet because we have not yet decided on a color. But while we are thinking about it, here is a photo of the view through the picture window that will be directly over the kitchen sink.
Sweet.