Sometimes it just keeps coming.

Saturday night our sewer backed up — again. The last time was only 2 weeks after we moved into this house back in May. Apparently the maple tree out front is particularily virile and chose to delve in between the cracks of our sewer pipe to take a drink of the slushy shit shake that existed there. While that’s nice and all, the roots tend to clog with TP and other things and plug the whole damned system. Enticing! So since Saturday night we haven’t had decent showers, been able to use the toilets, or sinks.

You never really know how much you use your septic system until you don’t have it. The modern convenience of being able to go take a crap and watch it forever and completely swirl out of your life is just incredible when you think about it. Also, bathing with a cup and then using a hose to siphon the bathtub water out the bathroom window to the ground below isn’t what I would list as the Number 1 activity to do with your wife on a dull evening. Taking a leak outside isn’t so bad for the males (although the grass suffers slightly) but where do you go for a #2 at midnight? We had to destinate one of the thrones as “Brown Hills” for such things and one as “Yellow Lake” for the other.

Last time cost us $170 using Murphy’s Heating and Plumbing, who left my basement filthy and were generally very rude about the bill. This time was $144 for RotoRooter — $95 for the cleanout (one big root), $30 for a new cap (WTF? It had better be good for $30), and $10 for the trip since they came from Iowa Falls (a solid 45 min drive from here) to do the job.

The only upside is that I learned a few things:

1. The copper sulfate that we threw down the toilet the last time at the recommendation of Murphy’s is, according to the RotoRooter guy, next to worthless. While it DOES apparently burn the root tips, it doesn’t do much more than that. On the other hand, RR has a product that costs $65 per 2 lbs. (whew!) but is guaranteed to work and only has to be done once a year. So, that’s on my schedule for next spring now (since it doesn’t make much sense to do right now while the tree is dormant). Gotta be better than this stupid cleanout shit.
2. Other places don’t use blades to clean out the pipes, which means that they can often miss getting rid of all the roots that they should. The guy said that they use 3″ blades on the end of their snakes to shred anything in there. Sounds like fun to me.

So, it’s done now and we can use our system in peace and tranquility at least for another 7 months, or longer, if I have anything to say about it. Very annoying.

I’m going to have to look at my home insurance, see if it covers any of this, and look at the rules behind home disclosures and see if the sellers should have mentioned this on their sheet or not. It might not have prevented me from buying the place, but it sure would have been nice to know that the problem existed so I could expect and prevent it.

Ah, the life of a homeowner. *growls* I was going to buy a new hard drive to replace the one that is dying a slow and painful death. You know, the one with all my DATA on it. But now we’ll be paying so some guy with his name on his shirt could come by and clear out my shit chute. Oh joy.