I have been a self-employed plumber for over 25 years and I have had many interesting experiences during that time. I get to experience the good feeling when I really help out a homeowner through a sometimes harrowing situation, and help to make everything turn out well.
I will never forget one call I made in the middle of the summer in Suffolk County, Long Island where I live and work. The call mentioned a plugged up toilet, and they were getting desperate. This sounded interesting already.
When I arrived at the home, the wife was in tears and the husband had that far away look of despair. The husband said,” follow me”. He took me to the bathroom that went with the mother in law room, and the toilet was full to the rim with feces and sewage. He said that he had tried to get it loose with the snake he had purchased at Wal-Mart, but to no avail. I said, “hmmm, let’s go up on the roof”.
I really thought that instead of attempting to go through the mess in the bathroom, I would just go on the roof with the power snake and make short work of this project. The problem was, though an hour later we still had no progress from the roof of breaking through. I asked the husband where the cleanouts were, and he didn’t know. I walked around the house, and found the only one clear at the other end of the house.
So, I tried things from the other end, still with no luck. The house was a rancher, seemingly with a long, straight shot for the main line, which seemed to run the full length of the house. Whatever was stopping the line was probably somewhere in the middle. The puzzling factor, though was that I was certain my power snake had run the entire length of that line.
When coming in from the other end of the house didn’t seem to solve anything, I went back to the original bathroom and found that the contents of the toilet had receded out of the bowl. A thought came to me, which can at times, be dangerous. This one almost was.
I decided to remove the commode from its moorings and attack from the hole in the floor. I knew I had some extra wax donuts on the truck, so I figured we might as well go all out. I spent the next four hours running my power snake back and forth pulling out tissue all the while. It seemed that a slurry of tissue was caught in the pipe, and my snake would go right through it, and back, while the tissue would just plug up again.
As I came back through and out again, I noticed some movement and sounds of gurgles, which prompted me to keep the snake moving until I could get a sort of wave going. The more I moved, the more the back and forth pressure, until finally it broke loose and down to the city sewer it went. Victory, sort of.
Now the entire bathroom was a mess, but the people were cheering me on right beside me as I retrieved my equipment and reattached the commode. Yes there was a good bit of cleanup to do, but the folks were happy, and so was I. Just another job in the day of a plumber.
Go here if you need to find an emergency plumber in Suffolk County.