The Weekend Flood: Aftermath

During the week since the flood, the drains in the bathroom and kitchen continued to burble gas and drain slowly or not at all. Then, when I ran the washer at its lowest level using a machine cleaning solution, the spin-cycle water flooded the kitchen sink. After that, I had to go to laundromats to wash my clothes.

This was unacceptable. I needed the sewer pipes cleaned out, so that the drains would work again. I decided, while the weather was still pleasant (for winter), to call a plumber to clear out the drain pipe between my house and the town sewer. After a misunderstanding (the plumbing folks mistook my "fourth" for "first" in my address), the plumber arrived and set up a drum augur (the type that Roto-Rooter made popular). He fed the augur snake into the vent pipe, and worked it down the drain pipe, hitting and clearing several clogs along the way. At one point, the plumper had to hook up an extension to the snake. In time, the augur got near the town sewer, but could not reach it. The plumber had to retract the augur, remove its blade end, and replace it with a blunt end. That got the junction with the town sewer cleared.

What surprised me was what it was that was clogging my drain pipe. The plumber pulled out, along with the expected roots, large wads of shredded material that he identified first as tampons and then as baby wipes. I can believe the latter, as the previous owner had grandchildren. Then I remember that some adults use them as well. In either case, baby wipes (made from air-laid paper) do not break up in water, as toilet paper does. They are not meant to be flushed down the toilet, lest this sort of thing happens!

After the wads of material were pulled out of the pipe, I could wash and flush again without the bubbling or the drain-flooding. At long last, the drains work as they should.