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Mar. 24th, 2009 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSo I'm at work today...
The commercial space at SST called and said as how there was wet on the back piece of carpet there at the top of the stairs. This has happened before but last time I spent like twenty minutes on a ladder with a flashlight not able to find where the leaky bit was. (I am stupid and figured that the leaky bit would be directly above the wet bit because that's usually how it works.) This time, I shopvac'd the water and got up on the ladder with a flashlight and looked at the same sewer pipes (big-ass 4" diameter cast iron buggers) as I looked at before. They were all dry. Fail.
So, then I figured that maybe I should look more elsewhere. I looked inside the door to the basement, living dangerously by putting my ladder at the top of the stairs. Maybe, thought I with my great big brain, maybe the floor is not level and the water is coming from somewhere NOT right on top of the wet spot. Maybe the wet runs on the concrete floor towards the carpet and it gets wet that way. As this seemed reasonable, I started using my finger to poke at the large, cast-iron sewer line, which ran directly above my head. I was hoping to feel any wet where there might be leaking. The sewer line was dry and I was there, poking along it with impunity trying to find somewhere that felt wet or something.
I got nothing. I poked feet and feet of nothing-wrong-with-the-sewer-line, right up until I discovered that my index finger was strong enough to pierce cast iron for certain values of cast iron. My finger went through the cast iron like it was tissue paper and made a nice, finger-sized hole in the bottom of the sewer pipe. For those without benefit of plumbing experience, sewer pipes contain ick. At that point, the sewer pipe started spewing what we will euphemistically refer to as grey water all over the fucking place but primarily in a downward direction due to bloody-minded fucking gravity, pitiless master that it is. None of the yuck got on me except for on my index finger because I not only have cast-iron puncturing fingers, I have amazing cat-like reflexes in the face of grey water coming down upon my visage from above.
At that point, I went to the truck and got the shopvac, which I'd put away thinking (incorrectly) that I was done with the shopvac'ing. I slurped up the grey water in my shopvac and I shut off the water to the building and then I called Mike to come fix the sewer line. Mike is smarter than I am and more able to fix sewer lines that have a Y and then a T and then another Y with a different-diameter drain, all in two linear feet of pipe located directly above the fuse boxes for the building. Sometimes, hire it done is the correct answer. This was one of those times. Mike took the old sewer apart and put in new pvc sewer with fernco fittings to the old cast iron. It is all better now. We will be getting a bill, I'm sure.
I also went to see the house that wants financing. I have pictures of that on my digital camera which I will upload to flickr and send interested parties a link to, tomorrow. It's work related, that, and I don't feel like doing it now. Also, I'll need to resize shit so that the pictures will look OK on flickr and whatever. Mike said that he put a new well pump in that property a couple of years back and thinks it's well worth the amount we'd have loaned out on it. I did the walkthrough with the realtor today and it looks nice -- entire house has been redone. More on that with flickr. Later. I also got the Real Estate Disclosure Sheets which I'll have M. scan and email to you tomorrow.
The commercial space at SST called and said as how there was wet on the back piece of carpet there at the top of the stairs. This has happened before but last time I spent like twenty minutes on a ladder with a flashlight not able to find where the leaky bit was. (I am stupid and figured that the leaky bit would be directly above the wet bit because that's usually how it works.) This time, I shopvac'd the water and got up on the ladder with a flashlight and looked at the same sewer pipes (big-ass 4" diameter cast iron buggers) as I looked at before. They were all dry. Fail.
So, then I figured that maybe I should look more elsewhere. I looked inside the door to the basement, living dangerously by putting my ladder at the top of the stairs. Maybe, thought I with my great big brain, maybe the floor is not level and the water is coming from somewhere NOT right on top of the wet spot. Maybe the wet runs on the concrete floor towards the carpet and it gets wet that way. As this seemed reasonable, I started using my finger to poke at the large, cast-iron sewer line, which ran directly above my head. I was hoping to feel any wet where there might be leaking. The sewer line was dry and I was there, poking along it with impunity trying to find somewhere that felt wet or something.
I got nothing. I poked feet and feet of nothing-wrong-with-the-sewer-line, right up until I discovered that my index finger was strong enough to pierce cast iron for certain values of cast iron. My finger went through the cast iron like it was tissue paper and made a nice, finger-sized hole in the bottom of the sewer pipe. For those without benefit of plumbing experience, sewer pipes contain ick. At that point, the sewer pipe started spewing what we will euphemistically refer to as grey water all over the fucking place but primarily in a downward direction due to bloody-minded fucking gravity, pitiless master that it is. None of the yuck got on me except for on my index finger because I not only have cast-iron puncturing fingers, I have amazing cat-like reflexes in the face of grey water coming down upon my visage from above.
At that point, I went to the truck and got the shopvac, which I'd put away thinking (incorrectly) that I was done with the shopvac'ing. I slurped up the grey water in my shopvac and I shut off the water to the building and then I called Mike to come fix the sewer line. Mike is smarter than I am and more able to fix sewer lines that have a Y and then a T and then another Y with a different-diameter drain, all in two linear feet of pipe located directly above the fuse boxes for the building. Sometimes, hire it done is the correct answer. This was one of those times. Mike took the old sewer apart and put in new pvc sewer with fernco fittings to the old cast iron. It is all better now. We will be getting a bill, I'm sure.
I also went to see the house that wants financing. I have pictures of that on my digital camera which I will upload to flickr and send interested parties a link to, tomorrow. It's work related, that, and I don't feel like doing it now. Also, I'll need to resize shit so that the pictures will look OK on flickr and whatever. Mike said that he put a new well pump in that property a couple of years back and thinks it's well worth the amount we'd have loaned out on it. I did the walkthrough with the realtor today and it looks nice -- entire house has been redone. More on that with flickr. Later. I also got the Real Estate Disclosure Sheets which I'll have M. scan and email to you tomorrow.
