Catching up - Part IV - Laurie's Birthday - Part 1

Wednesday was Laurie's Birthday. My wonderful wife has had a difficult year, what with my unemployment, her job stresses, and the burden of being such a caring mother for her three children who have unique problems of their own. Today was her day to have some good done for her. While she was at work, the electricians came to the house, and were able to complete all the outstanding issues, including installation of the new under-counter Microwave Oven/Hood Fan. This installation had been dreaded (and delayed for over a month) for a couple of reasons... first, the installation was not part of the electrician's contract, and I really couldn't afford to pay extra; and second, the wall space where the oven/fan was to be mounted was three inches narrower than the width of the oven. On this day, I was able to convince the electricians to mount the oven in exchange for services in the original contract that they claimed could not be completed due to the age of our home (and an inability to access existing wiring without damaging the walls). To overcome the problem of the wall being too narrow, I had suggested that they cut away a portion of the doorway frame. This added about 2.5 inches to the width of bare wall. It was sufficient to hang the oven with only about 1/2 inch overhang into the doorway.

But, even with that problem solved, the oven couldn't be hung because we don't have a cabinet over the stove onto which to attach the oven. Let me digress... Before buying the oven, we made it clear to the salesman that we needed a wall-mountable unit (as opposed to an over-counter unit). Having trotted out the instruction manual for this model, the salesman indicated that it was clear that the oven came with a "wall mount template", and instructions on how to mount the unit to the wall. Sure, the box also came with under-cabinet mounting instructions, but we thought that part was optional.

Bottom line, when we actually tried to mount the oven, it was abundantly clear that it would not be possible to simply stick it on the wall like a fridge magnet. After much discussion with the contractors (who offered to build/mount some kitchen cabinets for us - yes, these "electricians" were also our carpenters), we decided that the most cost-effective solution would be to mount some L-brackets to the wall, above the location of the stove, and then screw the L-bracket into the top of the microwave (as if the screws had been applied through an over-the-stove cabinet. This solution seems to have worked, though we'll need to keep a careful eye on these brackets to ensure they don't come loose over time.

Moving on... during the morning, I received my last digging clearance from the utilities. Now, it was time to call the plumber who I had selected to install the front-yard cleanout. To my surprise, he indicated he could come over that same afternoon to do the job. He arrived earlier than anticipated, getting to the house at about 11:00AM. And with him, was his backhoe operator. I had opted to forego hiring the guy with the underground camera, because I had located the digging location by sound echos when our house had been electric eeled. Confident in that information, the backhoe operator started to dig. And dig. And dig. He had gotten down about 4 feet when we all started to have some doubts. After all, the echos had been SO CLEAR it was unlikely the sound could have come from so far down. We thought we'd go down one more foot... All of a sudden, we hit a water line (thankfully not the main line, just the one leading to our house)!

How could that be?! We had received all the clearances, and the path of the water line had been clearly marked on my lawn - the backhoe was nowhere near that line. We had to call the city water department. When they came to shut off the water, they put their special "key" into the shutoff valve and tried to turn off the flow. Nothing happened. They tried again, this time using a cutting oil to loosen the valve. Still no stopping the flow. Finally, one of the city workers had a brainstorm. He used a metal detector to follow the break backwards from the hole to the shutoff valve. In so doing, he discovered a SECOND shutoff, obscured by some topsoil. It seems the original clue came, saw the exposed valve, and assumed it was ours. It turned out to be our neighbor's, and we had ended up digging right over our water line.

It took a couple of hours to repair the damage and restore water to my home. Then, we started to move the backhoe a bit further from the original digging spot, looking for the sewer line... Fast forward two hours, and half of my front yard is gone. We've been following a parallel path to the original dig site, and have still not located the sewer line. In desperation, I finally give in and place a call to the underground camera guy. Within a half hour of his arrival, he's got a camera going through the underground piping, and the video screen is showing a mass of tree roots obstruction the pipes. In fact, it gets to the point where the camera runs into roots so thick, the camera cannot proceed further down the line. It is blocked about 12 feet short of where we think the proper dig spot should be. According to the magnetic locator mounted to the head of the camera, the operator indicates that we should be digging IN THE ORIGINAL DIG LOCATION!!!

The backhoe now positions itself over the original hole, and as it carefully avoids the now-repaired water line, we continue to dig deeper. At about the 6-1/2 foot depth, we finally locate the sewer line.

Once the line was located, we used an electric eel to find its way back towards our house. And we find that as the eel is withdrawn, it has picked up fresh clay on its head. That means that somewhere underground, at about the same place where the video camera had run into thick roots, the undergound sewer line has been broken. We think it was broken by tree roots that had made their way into the pipe. We used the eel to cut out the overgrowth of tree roots, but decided it was well outside our budget to fix the entire length of broken sewer line. It will stay as it is until the previous owner agrees to pay for its repair.

So now, we have a cleanout installed on our lawn, but we got more bad news on the plumbing front. The internal drainage pipes are galvanized steel, and the feeder pipes that empty the kitchen/bathroom sinks into the main line are so clogged with rust that they are virtually unusable. Although the toilet and shower no longer back up, it is impossible to use the kitchen sink, bathroom sink, or dishwasher without causing water to back up for hours (6-8 hours on average). No amount of cleaning of pipes seems to help, and this part of the plumbing will need to be repaired within the next few days.