As CD and I are constantly switching out pans and pouring the collected water down his shower drain, I am trying to get a hold of Hubby on the phone. He says yes, the main water valve is the one in the storage room, so I run to turn it off. However, we still have a waterfall in the playroom, and now CD and I have found two washtubs that we are also using to collect the water and are switching them out about every 2 minutes. Hubby says to turn off the main breaker switch. I run to the plumbing closet which is in CD's room, open the closet door and there is water all over that floor, starting to get CD's carpet wet, and water is dripping all over the electrical control panel. I have to step into the plumbing closet to turn off the main switch, but I'm afraid of being electrocuted, so CD finds me something I can use to reach into the closet with and it will flip the switch without me standing in the water trying to do this. Even after doing all of this, our waterfall continues for a little while until everything completely stops.
Hubby says he will come home as soon as he can, but he has some things he absolutely must stay and finish, and then it's about a 40 minute commute. In the meantime the kids and I have to run to the old house to get him some tools that he will need in trying to figure out this problem. When we get back home, I remember that I had a load of clothes in the dryer, but since the power has been turned off, I need to take them out of the dryer and hang them on a small clothesline we have outside, and scatter the others that don't fit on that around the house to dry. As I go into the master bathroom to check on things, I happen to look over at the tub and see that there is water in it. Okay, so the pipes are obvious backed up and it's not just effecting the master bath toilet, but also the tub. I decide I better check the master bath shower and sure enough, there is gunk on that floor from water that has backed up into there also. I go check on Princess' bathroom and yep, her toilet is backed up also. Okay, so we now know that both of those bathrooms are connected and the pipes are backing up everything in these two rooms. However, CD's bathroom downstairs does not seem to be effected by all of this.
Hubby does his best to try to figure out just where the clog is by tearing down the playroom ceiling. We can definitely find in what places the leaks are coming from in the pipes, also the pipe leaks in the plumbing closet. I go upstairs to unbolt and disconnect the toilet from the floor while Hubby runs to the hardware store to buy a snake. He removes the toilet from the master bathroom and tries using the snake to find any clogs there may be. The kind he buys doesn't seem to be very flexible to move through the pipes so I run to the hardware store to get a different kind of snake. It is now after 8:00 pm. As I am driving and thinking about all kinds of things, I drive right past the street I need to turn onto to get to the hardware and by the time I realize it, I make a circle to get there and so I have wasted at least 5 minutes, if not more trying to get to the store. When I get home, this snake seems to be doing a better job. After shoving the 50 foot snake through the pipes as best he can, he then proceeds to to use a plunger to see if anything comes up of if air pushes anything through the pipes. We can hear water start to move farther and farther away through the pipes, so maybe he's done it?! We have some Drano, so we decide to use that and see if it helps. He tries plunging again, and stuff starts bubbling up out of the hole in the floor where the toilet had been removed from, and we have another waterfall flowing through the hole in the downstairs playroom ceiling. Okay, we know we have been defeated and need to stop for the night so clean up begins. CD will be sleeping upstairs on the couch tonight to keep away from that water smell, and Hubby will stop by the YMCA on his way to work early in the morning to take his shower, but will hopefully be able to come home in the morning sometime after getting a few things at work situated.
Now, where is the thanks in a situation like this.....?
Well, I'm thankful that the kids and I were home when this started happening. If we had been gone and come home to a flooded playroom and bathroom, that would have been terrible.
I'm thankful that Cool Dude is old enough to help me try to figure everything out and is able to think on his feet by running to get pans, and staying by my side through the whole ordeal until the water finally stopped flowing.
I'm thankful that the outside temps today were only in the 70s so that CD and Princess could go outside and spend hours playing with the neighborhood children while the power was off inside the house as Hubby and I worked on the plumbing problem.
I'm thankful that I have a husband who is very handy around the house and tried everything he could think of to fix the problem and spent hours doing it even though he'd been up since about 5:30 am and had worked a long, hard day at his job.
I'm thankful that after isolating the areas, we were able to turn the power back on, but just have to be careful about using the bathrooms.
I'm thankful that when we bought this house, it came with a warranty that looks like it should cover our plumbing problem. There will probably be some expense depending on what exactly needs to be fixed, but we'll have to wait and see what exactly happens with that.
I'm thankful that God kept me calm through it all, even though I felt like crying on the inside.
This story is not over yet. We do have a plumber who is coming out to take a look at the problem, so I'll keep you all updated on all of that.
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