Sunday, September 17, 2006
At four in the morning we woke up to the sounds of Noah barfing over the edge of the top bunk. As I ventured into the boys' room, Hunter was on his way out of the room headed for the bathroom and informed me that he told Noah to barf over the edge instead of in his bed. So, sure enough, when I entered their room, Noah was still leaning over the edge staring down at the dark brown spot of barf on the white carpet. I sat myself down in the rocking chair and just stared at the stinky puddle of puke and tried to figure out in my half-asleep state, how I was going to clean up the mess. And I stared at Denver who was still sound asleep on the very edge of his bed and thanked heaven that he wasn't covered in the yucky brown mess. Then Noah scooted himself back and said, "It was kind of like in Goonies when Chunk barfs over the edge of the balcony at the movie theatre." Yeah. . . except there's no handy theatre employee to mop up the mess, huh Noah? Anyway, as I sat there soaking it all in (or rather doing nothing) Mark came in and took charge of the situation. He went all the way downstairs to get the wet vac while I poured a glass of water on the puke and handed Noah a barf bucket with the instructions that he barf in the bucket and that next time, if he didn't have a bucket that he should not barf over the edge but rather on his sheets. Then, I took Caleb out of the room so he wouldn't be terrified of the noise while Mark vacuumed the heck out of our carpet. Amazingly, Mark removed just about all the barf, all by himself. I kept waiting for him to stop so I could help and as soon as I heard the vacuum shut off I headed for the door. Of course, Mark beat me and as he opened the door, Caleb (who slept through everything else) woke up. We got Caleb and ourselves settled when all of the sudden--more barf! We run in the room and find that Noah barfed not in the bucket but all over his bed. Apparently he had only heard the last half of my barfing instructions. I don't know what he thought I gave him the bucket for--maybe he thought I was just being silly. Anyway, we rip his sheets off the bed, get Noah settled on the downstairs couch, and decide there's no point in sleeping anymore. Caleb is up, Mark has to get his Dad and brother from the airport and the plumber is supposed to arrive by seven. So I threw the sheets in the wash and head back upstairs to clean the bathroom and have a shower quick. That's when the boys started shouting that our downstairs toilet was bubbling. And I know instantly what that means. The washing machine is draining into our basement and our plumbing problem is far from being fixed.
So, Mark runs downstairs and sure enough, we're having the same problem only worse because now it was threatening to back up into our toilets. Now, Tuesday when they came they put a "check valve" on the offending pipe which is supposed to keep water from coming out of the pipe and they said that everything was free and clear and that it must just be our shower water colliding with our laundry water. I understood why you might want a check valve on certain pipes but I knew I didn't want one on this particular pipe. If water can't come out into our unfinished basement where would it come out? The toilets, the bathtubs, the shower, the sinks. . .no thanks. Anyway, so after SolvIt's visit Tuesday I was even more uneasy about our particular sewer problem (I also didn't believe that our shower running at the same time as our washing machine would cause such a problem.) Thursday, the check valve proved incapable of keeping the water in the pipes and we called SolvIt once again. They said someone would be out Friday between 11:00am and 1:00pm to take a look. That someone was the infamous Eddy we've been dealing with since day one. He looked over everything and said he needed a camera. So, he went to Lunch and promised he'd return as soon as the camera was close--apparently they only have two or three of these cameras and it takes awhile to get them. The thing I don't get is why he didn't just bring the darn camera with him in the first place--after Tuesday he must have known he would need it. So, we wait and wait and wait and wait and no one ever comes back. So, SolvIt says they'll send someone out Saturday morning at 7:00am to camera the line.
So that brings us back to our spouting washing machine and our vomiting five year old. Mark leaves for the airport leaving me with the four kids, no plumbing and nowhere to dump the buckets of barf Noah is producing. My only hope is that SolvIt will arrive soon and fix everything--okay. . . feed us a bunch of bull and walk away from the problem pretending they've fixed everything. 7:00, 8:00, 9:00--no SolvIt. Finally they call and say something about their plumber having "some issues" but that he's on his way. Right. Mark returns with his Dad and brother and only then does the plumber arrive. Thank goodness this time it's not Eddy. He investigates our situation and finally declares our situation an emergency. He calls up Eddy and Ted and the excavator and instructs them to dig up the line again and fix it. So, the work crew shows up and digs up our front yard all the way to our sidewalk which is as far as they can go without a new permit. And once again our front yard looks like this:
I had to leave to take Denver to a birthday party so out of desperation I plugged the upstairs bathtub and took probably the fastest shower I've ever had. I don't know all the details of what went on while I was gone but shortly after my return, they pulled this nasty slug (see the black thing next to that short section of pipe) out of the line that they had declared "free and clear" last week--you know the one they said we didn't need to worry about replacing.
Anyway, to make this long story short, we still have a pit out in our front yard. They didn't have sand to fill beneath the pipe to keep it from collapsing under the weight of the soil and rocks when they refilled the pit. So Mark insisted they leave it as is until they could return and do things properly. Also, there's seven more feet of pipe to the main line and that seven feet of pipe has a root in it that I'm insisting they remove. So, they have to pull a sidewalk permit and dig up our front yard even more to fix that section of pipe. And of course, they want another three grand for that seven wee feet of pipe. And Mark was out arguing with the work crew until 10:00pm again. And of course, our insurance company only wants to pay for half of what we already paid. And of course, we have no idea when they are going to finish the job or how long it will take which means another day of unusable toilets and unwashed laundry. And I'm just wondering when this is all going to go away and wishing we had never called this company, ever!
posted by Shana # 10:31 PM 
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