Drainage Part I

So, I mentioned in the first post that we had a sewer backup within days of moving into BHH. Our flood started with what seemed like a typical kitchen drain clog. Andy, the more prolific dishwasher in this house, mentioned that he could not wash a full sink of dishes quickly because the drain was so slow. We were in the middle of sorting through a box maze in every room, so we just dealt with it for a few days. Andy tried to snake the drain to no avail, and I did throw a bottle of drain cleaner down the sink. Looking back on it, that seems hilarious now. Our efforts were clearly useless for the scope of this project.

We put up with the slow drain for a few more days. We could hear a “knocking” sound in the drain when the sink emptied. Without any real experience living in BHH, we did not know if a knocking sound in the drain was normal. Note for the future: It is not.

Finally, after a torrential downpour of rain, I got brave enough to head down to the basement to see if we had flooding. I was shocked. I discovered that the basement, which is nearly the size of the first floor (over 2000 square feet) was covered in 1-2 inches of standing water. I wrongly assumed that it was all a result of the downpour from the night before. A smart person would have jumped right on this problem. I shook my head and decided that I would add “fix basement drainage” to the To Do list.

Two more days passed, and the kitchen drain just got too irritating. I scheduled an appointment with Roto Rooter. I called them because they are incredibly fast at responding, and I had a coupon for $50 off any service. They were there within a few hours. I described the problem to the technician, and we headed down to the basement to search for the clean-out drain. I warned him that the basement was wet because of the storm. Oh silly me.

When he saw the mess, he looked at me and said,

“Uh. That’s sewer.”

What?! I tried to cover my horror appropriately. I have never willingly invited someone down to my sewer-covered basement. That sort of thing seems like it should be between really close friends. I had just met the very nice man from Roto Rooter. It suddenly occurred to me that every time we had emptied the kitchen sink, let the water out of the bathtub (We don’t have a shower yet.) or flushed the toilet, for over a week, it had been going directly into our basement. Yuck.

It was a good lesson for us in basement care, and it served as a warning that we cannot ignore problems in this house. Andy and I both know this, but with the amount of TLC that BHH needs, it is easy to want to bury our heads in the sand about some projects and issues that arise.

Roto Rooter had the drain cleared in no time. Once the drain was cleared, clean-up was pretty easy. It just took some time. Thank goodness that the basement was mostly empty. I will be forever grateful that all I had to clean was the floor. In the spirit of DIY, I will explain how I cleaned up the mess.

This job did not really require any safety equipment. I did wear rubber rain boots, and I put plastic grocery bags over my hands to serve as gloves when I needed to pick anything up off the floor. If you have special cleaning circumstances, don’t hesitate to ask your plumber for advice. He or she may have some really good tips.

First, I used a broom and dustpan (that will never ever ever be used upstairs again) to sweep everything to the middle of the floor. Then, I scooped it up with the dustpan and placed it in a heavy duty trash bag. The bag went out with the garbage on our trash day. After doing this, only water was left on the floor.

Next, I used our 8-gallon wet/dry vacuum to get as much water off the floor as I could. I emptied that out onto an undeveloped section of our yard. Fortunately, one of our basement rooms has a drain that goes directly to the sewer, so there was not a lot of water left in that room. Much of it had receded once the clog was cleared. I swept the leftover water down the drain.

After doing that, I wanted to clean the floors. I had a little bleach left over from another job, so I diluted some in very hot water. We will be switching to less-toxic hydrogen peroxide in the future, but I wanted to use what I had on hand for this clean-up job.

I mopped the floors with the bleach water, and I used the wet/dry vac for any puddles. Once the entire basement floor was mopped, I used an old box fan, set on high, to dry one room at a time. The house also came with two dehumidifiers in the basement, so I emptied the pans and made sure they were running properly. The work was not as unpleasant at it may seem. The thought of what I was cleaning was worse than the reality. A home’s sewer contains a large volume of plain waste water. It is not all a horror show.

It took about three days to dry the basement completely. During that time, Andy and I worked on some downspouts on the outside of the house because we suspect that some of the water also came from the downpour. I will write about that next time since this post is already too long.

The happy ending is that now the basement is very clean and very dry. I am currently a wee bit obsessive about that room. I check on it once or twice a day when I empty the drain pans on the dehumidifiers. It looks great.

We would not have chosen this for a first project, but I am kind of glad it happened now. It taught us a lot about the sewer system at BHH. We are currently setting aside money for expensive future repairs that might be required on the sewer line from the house to the street. We are also crossing our fingers that it won’t be necessary any time soon.

Total Cost:: $266

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to ask.