A Stinky Story

So, we're not one week yet in our new house when the first interesting thing happened. We did laundry. Washing clothes is not normally cause for excitement, but with this load the toilet in the adjacent bathroom flooded.

One call later to the plumber, 2 1/2 hours, some time on the roof with a motorized snake, and voila, clog cleared. And just to make sure it was really cleared, the plumber ran the water for half an hour.

That night, Brian was muddling around in the garage when he noted a vaguely damp, unpleasant smell just about everywhere in the house, particularly in the kitchen, family and living room. After Erin went to bed, he bravely donned his rattiest clothes, dug out the flood light and dove into the crawl space to check for a leak. Can you guess where this is going? He crawled swam through muck to get to the sewer pipe. He finds it is bent, which was likely causing the clog, and finds not just a leak but a giant hole. That's right, folks. A hole. So all the water from the kitchen sink, powder room toilet and sink, utility sink, and clothes washer was, instead of flowing to the East Bay MUDD treatment plant was dumping out under our house. Ick.

One additional call later to the homeowners warrantee company, one sanitation specialist, several hundreds of dollars of bactericide, fungicide, and absorbent compound and one 100% homeowners-warranty-covered plumber later, our pipes efflux to the magical sewage treatment plant, the crawlspace is drying (with chemical aid), and the only side effect is the house smells vaguely like a porta potty.