There’s nothing like waking up on New Year’s Morning and finding your basement flooded from Below. Yup. This is the 3rd time since I plumbed up the new bathroom.
Something is wrong.
There only so many things that can go wrong, though, and I had a pretty good idea where to start. I rented a big honking 100′ drain snake and wrestled it down each of the 3 cleanouts until it stopped, and then I opened up the manhole and found a ginormous dried turd blocking the overflow on the tank intake.
“Yup,” I said, “That’ll do it.” And I fixed it. Problem solved.
So Mary does a load of wash, and I’m like: “Go ahead and do as many loads as you want, because – trust me – the problem is fixed.” And she doesn’t believe me, and she makes me go downstairs before dinner to check and, just to humor her, I did so and, of course, the basement was flooded again.
It was a subdued dinner.
There are only so many things that can go wrong, though, and I decided that:
When I roto-rootered all the drains, I loosened up 170′ of crud in the pipes, and it all wanted to go downhill at once when I started flushing.
And there is a reducing tee (wtf!) where the drain pipe hits the septic tank, so when the fast-moving 4″ pipeful of loose crud hit the 3″ reducer, it came to a halt, and traffic backed up for miles.
So I was outside in the snow for the second day in a row. It was a crisp 6 degrees out, and if I’d have licked my shovel, my tongue would have stuck. I manhandled my manholes like a man, and I examined my own sewage like a shaman. And sure enough, it was stuck. Constipated, if you will. I loosened it up with, um, gloves, and imperceptibly, it started to move. A centimeter. An inch. Go, baby go! It started picking up and, with a giant sucking sound, it let loose . From a standing start, a 3 inch torpedo launched 3 feet in 3 seconds. It was jet propelled by a blur of chunks and dirty slurry, followed by crisp clear sewer water and a yeasty burp.
I packed up my tools and replaced the manhole. I know victory when I see it.
Of course, I told Mary the whole problem was too much toilet paper!
Mary sold her business. She packed her last order today, and everything’s on pallets to go to Rhode Island. Way to go, Mary!
And I helped! Today, for example, my job was to take the sign off the front of the building. It was said to be “too high to reach” and “not worth the trouble”, but “that’s half the fun,” so I set up an extension ladder (nailed for safety to the frozen ground) in front of the sign and took out the top screws. I lowered the ladder so I could take out the bottom screws and, while I was still fussing with the ladder, the sign caught a gust, broke loose from the building, and fell, swinging past me like a giant knife before it hit the ground. Most of the sign survived, but my pride took a hit.
This was an unforced error. I didn’t think it through nearly hard enough. Gawd.
Three trucks in two days.
When you’re shipping stuff across state lines, there’s a lot of rules and regulations. Everything is either “hazardous” or “non-hazardous,” and you can’t ship anything “hazardous” in a moving van. So Mary came up with 16 pallets stacked high with hazardous goods, and a special truck came and got them. Then we detached and broke down everything in the building, stacked them on pallets or on top of one another, and taped them all together. Whew.
I took a shower. The basement did not overflow.
Two twenty-six footers were due the next day at eight am.
I got up at 6:30. It was below zero: The coldest day of the year. I got there fashionably late and we waited for the trucks. They showed up with 6 burly movers to move the stuff, and it all fit perfectly, and they were packed and off in 2 hours. I pushed a push broom for the rest of the afternoon, and – where’s a mask when you need it? – breathed in a lot of dust.
I woke up with a hangover. I thought it was the 133 proof liquor, but Mary thinks it was the dust, and I’m inclined to agree. My job, for the next couple days, is “burly mover.”
I cut up 14 pallets, hauled them home, and put the good stuff in the wood pile and the bad stuff in the burn pile. Say what you will about the Phoenix Farm Airbnb; it has the best camp fire wood on the planet.
Next day, my main job was breaking down and hauling away cardboard boxes. There was a giant pile of them in the freight bay, so I opened the overhead door, put the clicker in my pocket, and got to work. Shortly afterward, Mary tracked me down and wanted the clicker back. It turns out that, as I stretched and bent while I worked, I’d been butt-dialing all the other overhead doors in the building, and Mary had been closing them over and over.
By now, Mary is all moved out of her building. Cardboard boxes in the garage. Piles in the basement. Stuff in the barn and in the Cold Room. We’re pretty crowded right now, but we’re slowly getting it under control.
I took a good, hard look at C3PR, and I asked myself: How’s it going? How close am I getting? What kind of problems remain? How hard are they? Do the costs beat the benefits? Is it really worth it?
And I decided to take it to the next level.
My CAD program 30 day free trial went well, and I shelled out some big bucks for a very nice license. For the first time ever, I am making parts from actual dimensioned drawings instead of the seat of my pants.
And I’m excited.
30 grams