So far, the
house has been great, with a few minor exceptions and one not-so-minor
exception. The latter occurred late at night a few days ago – I had just
finished taking a shower when I stepped out into a puddle of water on the bathroom
floor. My first thought was, “Dummy, you didn’t close the curtain all the way.”
I began to mop up the water with a towel, but started to notice that, gee,
there was a lot. And it kept coming. There was no obvious flow from any one
area, but after checking the tub and sink with no obvious findings, I narrowed
the source down to underneath the toilet. We had noticed earlier that the
toilet seemed a bit unsteady, and I thought that perhaps the wax ring was old
and had finally failed. So, I turned off the water to the toilet and began
trying to drain it of water, first by flushing it. This, unfortunately, didn’t
work, as the toilet seemed to be backed up. Darn.
I went back
to mopping up some of the water for the time being, just to get it up off of
the floor. I was running out of towels, though, and figured I would eventually
need some more. I didn’t want to grab any towels I wasn’t supposed to use to
mop up toilet water. I went into our bedroom to check with my wife, but she had
already fallen asleep – it had been a long day of unpacking already. I didn’t
want to wake her if I didn’t have to, so I went back to mopping. Eventually,
though, I really needed more towels. So, I wandered back into the room and
tried gently shaking her. She was out – totally in REM sleep. I tried shaking
her again and speaking softly – I didn’t want to startle her awake (i.e. “We
have an EMERGENCY!!! Get up now!!!), so I started with, “Well, it looks like we
have the first problem in our new house; our toilet seems to be leaking water.”
After a bit, she slowly awoke, looked up at me dreamily, and sighed, “I looove
you…” and started to drift off again.
Well, this
wasn’t working.
I gently
shook her again and repeated myself. She began to awake again, looked up at me
(obviously only half-awake), and this time mumbled cheerily, “Why do you say
silly stuff like that?”
Sigh…
On the third
try, she finally registered what I had said and got up to help me get some
towels. Unfortunately, water was still seeping out from under the toilet. So,
since the toilet couldn’t flush, I used a coffee mug to scoop water out of the toilet
and the tank. I couldn’t get it all, though, and what was left would eventually
end up on the floor. The toilet had to come off. So, I unscrewed the bolts on
the floor and lifted it into the tub. Now, I could see that the wax ring was
indeed shot but that there was also a plug somewhere down the line – water was
backed up to the point where it was level with the floor.
It was
slowly draining, which was good – that meant this could wait until morning. So
I asked my wife for a hand towel that she never wanted to see again and stuffed
it down the drain to keep the sewer smell out of the house.
In the
morning, the landlord called the plumber. After the plumber spent some time
rodding the pipes out through the opening for the toilet, he walked out of the bathroom
mumbling, “This is a problem…” That was reassuring…
He went and
grabbed his handy-dandy pipe video camera – essentially an endoscope for
drains. It was pretty cool to see the inside of our pipework, actually, and he
was able to localize the problem: a small clump of fine roots had grown into
the drain, creating a catch for things like toilet paper and…other things... eventually leading to a clog. Over time, this reached the “clogging threshold,” which in
turn created enough pressure in the pipes to cause the wax ring under the
toilet to fail, which resulted in the seeping toilet water I stepped into when
I finished showering.
Yuck.
Anyhow, he
rodded it out as best as he could, and recommended copper sulfate to send down
the hatch occasionally to kill the root buildups. If we could avoid digging up
the pipes, that would be best for all parties involved. We’re crossing our
fingers, and plan on flushing that stuff down religiously.
That wasn’t
the end of our troubles, however. Today, my wife and I were running some
errands. We got our Illinois licenses and plates (the DMV is always an
adventure…a three-hour one, in this case. It also involved taking a written driving
test, which was fun...), went shopping, went to the bank, and on the way to our
last stop our car started making a really loud, ominous clicking sound.
Apparently it had made it across the country and was sick and tired of us
driving it here and there… It actually sort of sounded like it was trying to
pretend like it was a diesel-fueled vehicle, which it most definitely is not.
We pulled
over and I popped the hood. My ever-so-patient wife hopped in the driver’s
seat and give it some gas while I looked into the innards of the vehicle. It
sounded like it was coming from the serpentine belt, possibly one of the
pulleys…maybe the tensioner? We got back on the road and I was debating with
myself about trying to take the belt off, figure out which pulley it was,
replacing it, and putting the belt back on, when the car started smoking at a
stop light. I turned it off, figuring I would let it cool for a second and turn
it back on when we got a green light…but the green light came and the car
wouldn’t turn back on. Darn it. It sounded like the battery had died, which is
also a possibility – but now? Maybe it was the alternator...or maybe the car
was just saying, “Take this, fools!” Regardless, my aspirations of fiddling
with the vehicle quickly dissipated. My wife hopped in the driver’s seat again
and I got out and pushed the car into a nearby parking lot. We called a tow
truck (thank God for AAA!!) and had it towed to an auto shop near our house,
where it will reside until tomorrow (hopefully no longer than that…).
Ah well… I
guess it’s better that all of this happens now than right before a big test
later. Otherwise, though, things have been going very smoothly – the drive over
was great, the moving went smoothly, and we’ve found some great deals on
Craigslist for various pieces of furniture. We’re excited to finally be here,
and looking forward to finally beginning this next chapter of our lives
together.
