We purchased our house many years ago and although I am mostly satisfied with it, there are a few things about it that I’ve come to hate. Probably the number one problem on my list is that while half the house has a cellar, the other half sits on top of a crawl space. This limits how much storage space we have available (exacerbated by the lack of an attic) but even worse since a lot of the plumbing is in the crawlspace, when something goes wrong it is a disaster to deal with.
Over the weekend I went down in the cellar to check some mouse traps I had put down during the week and while I was down there I heard the sound of running water coming from the crawlspace. The only entrance to the crawlspace is located a couple of feet behind the furnace about four feet off the floor, so I slipped past the furnace and peered into the entrance; a drain pipe connected to the main drain going out to the septic system was leaking like crazy. I didn’t crawl into the area (an adventure in itself) but from my vantage point it appeared that the pipe had just fractured. Wonderful. There was a flood of waste water on the floor and the water currently emptying into the space was from the shower that my wife had just finished up.
I did some further investigation and it appeared that we could still use the downstairs bathroom since it was a direct connection to the main line, but using the upstairs bathroom and potentially the kitchen would be a problem.
Today my wife contacted our plumber and was told they were booked up and wouldn’t be available to next week. We tried other plumbers, the majority of which have ads touting 24/7 emergency service. Most of them didn’t even return calls and the few that did said they were too busy and not available. It drives me crazy, why advertise 24/7 emergency service if you have no intention of providing it?
Anyway, where things stand is that we have one bathroom that appears to work without flooding the crawlspace, although I hate using it fearing that a rush of water could still be a problem, and no hope of getting the situation fixed until next week. All this just in time for Thanksgiving, my birthday and three vacation days that I have off. Great timing.
It could be worse, the break could have happened on the main line in which case we would have no bathrooms available and would have to move into a hotel for the week but it’s still pretty depressing and stressful. I can’t wait until we get this resolved.
