Who Ya Gonna Call?

The scenario this very evening: There I was standing in the basement minding my own business among the cat litter boxes, the aniline dye stains and the boxes full of crapola that have been there for years. I was actually attacking an old gas fire appliance that we have absolutely no use for with a wire brush (coz that's the kind of guy I am. I always have to be doing something worthless!) The wife is giving your favorite little munchkin a bath and world is our oyster!

Then I hear "gurgle, gurgle" and water is rising out of the basement drain. This tells me two things. The obvious one being that Elizabeth is finished with her bath. The second thing it tells me is that I should really lay off the high fiber foods! Within a minute the water subsides and I go back to scraping with my wire brush figuring that I will have to deal with the situation within the hour or else I will be dealing with a worse situation in the morning!

Then one minute goes by and I see water rising out of the drain again only faster and it is pouring all over the floor! This tells me two more things. The obvious one being that the wife is in the shower and that I REALLY need to lay off the high fiber foods. So I run up the stairs shouting "Stop running the water! Turn off the taps and whatever you do, DON'T FLUSH!"

Now anyone with an old house that has an 80 year old maple tree in their front yard knows what the problem is here. In fact, it is one of those recurring ones that comes back every year like clockwork. The bad part is, when it happens at 9 PM you know you are screwed until the morning unless you know the secret to temporarily cleaning your sewer line quickly 95% of the time. This fix won't work forever because mother nature ultimately wins. Tree roots have a thing for real, bonafide, genuine crap and when the two become entwined, the sh*t has really hit the fan! At that point you have only two options and you may as well eat fiber until a bush grows out of your *ss because it doesn't matter one bit any more! The two options are A) Rent a ginormous drain snake and hope you know what you are doing or B) Pay someone else to snake your drain at $100 a pop and hope they know what they are doing! If you elect option A) make sure you wear leather gloves that you can afford to throw away unless like us you have another house where you can stash them until they dry out and the smell won't get to you every day!

So. Who wants to know what the quick fix was that allowed my dear wife to finish her shower within 5 minutes and not have to stand around drip drying until morning? I've divulged this secret in a previous post and it is answered within this post for those of you who absolutely must know this little trick. For a clue, let me add that the trick didn't work for me LAST YEAR.

No, I didn't go out and cut down the tree.......