The Irish Curse

Back in mid-January I made an innocent trip downstairs to the basement only to find suspiciously damp pieces of furniture at the base of the stairs and, upon further inspection, sopping wet carpet, standing water and some level of debris near the floor drain that sits in between our furnace and water heater.

While not able to pinpoint the source of the water, B and I got to work. We removed all of the wet carpet, toys, furniture and dragged the (insanely heavy) carpet out of the house. B wet-vacked the room and got the bulk of the water up, then with borrowed fans we dried out the floor over night. As frustrating as the work was, B made the comment that at least it wasn't sewer water.

The next day, we called a plumber first thing and when he came out, he discovered that we had a blocked sewage line. I was hesitant to tell B (those of you who know him well understand what an INTENSE germaphobe he is) but he called to find out the damage and so the entire rest of the day he was stuck at work with the realization it was sewer water we were working with and he was just itching to get home and scrub everything down.

Our home is only 7 years old - not old enough to deal with a blocked sewage line - but nonetheless, $400 later the plumber unclogged the line (a pleasant task I'm sure) and was on his way. B came home and scrubbed down the plywood subfloor with bleach water and disposed of the wetvac because he could no longer bear to use it. We had shoved all of the items in the basement to one side (as the flooding only affected one half of the basement) and the plan was to use an anti-microbial paint on the floor before replacing the carpet.

We were in the midst of finding time for that project when, three weeks later, another innocent trip to the basement revealed more flooding. Not quite to the level it had been before, but still - flooding. B went through the roof. He was ready to sell the house, or more preferably, light a match to it. I was a bit more pragmatic (but then again, I didn't have to vacuum up the now-known sewage). The next morning I called the plumber again, and this time he brought reinforcements.

After two guys at our house for three hours, a camera unrolled through all of the sewage pipes in our home, a call to the company's owner who also came out, and some additional phone consultations with other "experts" in the field, they finally laid out the full extent of the problem.

For those of you that don't live in Colorado (at least the part where we do), you may not be aware of the very unstable soil we have here - its more of a clay - and it shifts terribly. When you purchase a home, you get an entire booklet on the soil. After this plumbing problem came to light we have since learned that just one house over from ours the soil samples came back so bad they could not build the houses they had planned and therefore we have a much larger park than we otherwise would have.

So apparently this fantastic soil we are sitting on has shifted, and in so doing the foundation of our home shifted and has crushed/bent/mangled a part of our sewage line. This is why the back up keeps happening, and will continue to be a problem until we get it fixed.

So what does it take to fix it you ask? Well it starts with bringing a backhoe into our front yard, where they will dig out our front bushes and lawn and tunnel in under our porch toward our basement. At that point, they will begin to hand dig until they reach our basement wall, where they will then cut a hole into the outer wall and find the plumbing. They will replace the crappy plastic PVC pipe with a cast iron one, and further insulate it with some kind of pebble-material to keep it from collapsing again. We'll have to replace all of the landscaping in the front yard, but hopefully they won't take out our beloved tree that we have worked so hard to bring to life and is (if I may say so myself) the best looking tree on the street.

The next logical question is, what will it cost? The bargain price of $7000, not including the replacement landscaping we'll have to handle ourselves. The good news (good is relative here) is that it will only take one solid day of work. I've already checked with homeowners insurance and they won't cover it, and our warranty seems iff-y at best. We are going to have to gear ourselves up for a fight.

So in the meantime, we are being extra cautious with everything we allow to go down any drain in our house. That means lots of extra flushing, tossing any kind of food rather than letting it go down the disposal, etc. B and I cautiously check the basement at least once a day, holding our breath, hoping for the best. Eventually its going to happen again. The question is, can we afford to get it fixed - or actually win the war on the warranty front - before that happens? Stay tuned...

And so beyond this extremely frustrating issue we are dealing with something else that is far more serious and life-altering, but still too up-in-the-air to blog about. Suffice it to say, I am looking back with much regret on New Years Day when we failed to eat our black-eyed peas. B may make fun of my Irish superstitions, but it seems like the leprechauns are exacting their revenge...