There are suds coming out of the roof of my house. I guess that's what I expected out of home ownership when I bought a house on Craigslist: some sort of Grimm's Fairy Tale gone askew.
If there are suds pouring from the roof of your house, you can probably assume that this isn't the only problem, and you'd be right. There I was, at 8:30 at night, talking on the phone, when I heard running water. I walked down the hall to see the toilet overflowing to flood the bathroom and sea monster its way into the hallway.
My reaction? Hang up on my friend, yell at my uncle (who was innocently watching a movie), and run up and down the hall with my hands in the air. Astonishingly, this behavior sequence did not create a sieve in my floor, or get any Disney dancing mops to the scene.
My uncle suggested that we check the vents on the roof to see if they were clogged with snow. I found the ladder, while I made a mental note that plumbing systems apparently have vents. With Ole holding the ladder, I climbed to the roof and declared one vent clear. On the other side of the house, the other vent was spewing and frothing suds.
Back inside, every towel was employed and my infomercial chamois were maxed out, despite their advertised ability to soak up a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi. The bathroom, hallway and kitchen had one inch of standing water and every sink on the ground floor was coughing suds or dirty water backwards through their drains. Ole suggested I try to flush the toilet, "just to see what happens." The philosophy that these types of ideas come from is: "It can't get much worse." I think you can guess what happened... something for which I did not have sufficient chamois.
Ole went back to his movie, I shut off any appliance that could conceivably tax the plumbing system, and, over the course of an hour, the drainage monsters in the depths of the house relented to allow the fluid in the toilet to sink. The foam on the roof is being covered by the still-falling snow.
Ole says, "See? We fixed it." and adds, "There are recorded instances of problems being solved just by sitting and praying." My version of this solution involves another chamois purchase and a morning call to the plumber.
If there are suds pouring from the roof of your house, you can probably assume that this isn't the only problem, and you'd be right. There I was, at 8:30 at night, talking on the phone, when I heard running water. I walked down the hall to see the toilet overflowing to flood the bathroom and sea monster its way into the hallway.
My reaction? Hang up on my friend, yell at my uncle (who was innocently watching a movie), and run up and down the hall with my hands in the air. Astonishingly, this behavior sequence did not create a sieve in my floor, or get any Disney dancing mops to the scene.
My uncle suggested that we check the vents on the roof to see if they were clogged with snow. I found the ladder, while I made a mental note that plumbing systems apparently have vents. With Ole holding the ladder, I climbed to the roof and declared one vent clear. On the other side of the house, the other vent was spewing and frothing suds.
Back inside, every towel was employed and my infomercial chamois were maxed out, despite their advertised ability to soak up a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi. The bathroom, hallway and kitchen had one inch of standing water and every sink on the ground floor was coughing suds or dirty water backwards through their drains. Ole suggested I try to flush the toilet, "just to see what happens." The philosophy that these types of ideas come from is: "It can't get much worse." I think you can guess what happened... something for which I did not have sufficient chamois.
Ole went back to his movie, I shut off any appliance that could conceivably tax the plumbing system, and, over the course of an hour, the drainage monsters in the depths of the house relented to allow the fluid in the toilet to sink. The foam on the roof is being covered by the still-falling snow.
Ole says, "See? We fixed it." and adds, "There are recorded instances of problems being solved just by sitting and praying." My version of this solution involves another chamois purchase and a morning call to the plumber.
2 comments:
oh damn. ruin your laminate?
I'm imagining your chimney belching soap suds. At least you don't need to wash your roof any time soon. Sounds like this must have cleaned it nicely. At least the week can't get worse right?
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