Plumbers need follow only two important rules:

[botias]

1. Egesta flows downhill
2. Don't bite your fingernails

I would maybe add a third: botias will always wish she hadn't bothered to call you. My poor tenants. Their sewage line became blocked, which perhaps led to them using a plunger with unnecessary and futile force, blowing out the seal on their toilet. Thus any activity with tub or toilet led to 'egesta' flowing out from under their toilet and flooding the bathroom. I called a plumber to clear the blockage. He charged me $110 to tell me that their sewer main is not sloped enough and for an unspecified number of hundreds more he would be happy to remedy this. This is a replay of a similar encounter with another plumber three years ago, except I'm learning. This was a much less expensive plumber. I turned down his kind offer. "It's going to be harder than you think," he warned. Pshaw. I live a life of freedom and leisure, but a person has to work hard to be this lazy. It was hard work. I had to fix the slope, find the blockage, clear it myself, and I still have a brimming bucketful of egesta under my house that I'm going to have to bury tomorrow in a deep hole, to be dug by moi. BUT, I am no longer intimidated by plumbing and am feeling EXTREMELY virtuous this evening, and if the plumber had even done what I did pay him to do, I'm not sure if that would all be true. So it's all good.

In more fun news, we all went on a cruise on a visiting tall-masted sailing ship, one of the ships that was in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I have to say it's pretty awesome when it plunges through the waves. They take on passengers to go as far as their next port, also. That would be fun (though exhausting) to do some year. Plus, grandma is taking the kids to Disneyland for a week in May. All we have to do is care for her flocks twice a day, and other than that the Mister and I are footloose and child-free. :P

Comments

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Yeah for the pirate cruise but eek! for the plumbing woes.

[botias.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I might get some of my money back on the plumber though!

[brunettepet.livejournal.com]

The cruise sounds awesome, the plumbing work much, much less so. How long did that take to fix?

You're exchanging the wee ones for flocks of what? I am smiling thinking of all the possibilities (seagulls, geese, sheep, goats).

[botias.livejournal.com]

I probably spent 8 hours over two days mucking with it, but that's because I'm a n00b, and because the plumber gave me bad advice. He claimed that the problem was due to the pipe being angled the wrong way (that we were trying to make s*** flow uphill) that there was no blockage, so I spent a fair bit of time tweaking and checking the slope to no effect before I started to take things apart and check for blockages. If/when it happens again I'll know just what to do, and what tools, etc., and it would only take me an hour or two. Happily, one of my new tenants worked in construction and was happy to replace the toilet seal for $30 so I didn't have to do that at least. Yay!

Chickens, ducks and geese. (SO GLAD I am not her neighbor.)

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

A sailing trip on the Black Pearl sounds like waaaay more fun than plumbing. I used to live in a daylight basement apartment, and one day a sump pump died. Gah! So glad I could just call the landlord, but I used a LOT of bleach cleaning up!