Frozen Sewer Saga

What the heck.  I write. I might as well post stuff I write here.

This is a memory from Feb. 18, 2019

Life is Beautiful All the Time…
After spending a wonderful week in Lakewood; celebrating with all of my children and grandchildren; and, not incidentally, doing repairs and odd jobs at each of their places where they live, I final got home to Minnesota about 11 PM on Thursday night, February 7th.

It had been snowing (since the top of the page and I had to wipe the cornstarch off of my muklaks as I lifted the heavy obsidian doorknocker…) all day in Minnesota on top of an earlier snowfall, on top of a previous week of absolutely treacherous ice weather… (It was 64 degrees and sunny the previous Tuesday in Lakewood!) So, of course, my driveway was impassable, and I had to drag my suitcase through calf deep snow. I entered through the garage and… remembered that I lock the door into the house from the garage when I am away…

I left the suitcase in the garage and waded up the front steps into my nice warm house.

Now, before I left, I had turned off the water to the house. Why? Because I have an outside faucet that was broken a few years ago and, I could not replace it without doing major surgery to the house. So, I fixed outside by adding some pieces to it. All well and good but, it still froze in the winter because there is no shut off inside. Earlier this winter, the fix froze and cracked, releasing a large bloom of water that promptly froze. But the cracked fix continued to leak a bit until the Polar Vortex, at which point it again froze solid.
But, the weather report told me that while I was out of town there was going to be a major thaw for several days (and there was – causing the aforementioned treacherous ice weather) and, I was afraid that the cracked faucet would thaw and break further, causing water to pour from my house for the next 7 days while I was gone! So, I shut off the water to the house.
Clever.

No, not really. When I turned the water on Thursday night, I discovered that the supply line from the floor to the water meter shut off was frozen.
Oy.

When we first moved in to this house, the house was sinking in one corner, and we paid a pretty penny to raise it and level it. They had to dig up the whole foundation on the same side of the house where the water line comes into the basement. When they filled it back up with dirt, there has been some settling of the dirt over the years and there are some air gaps beneath the basement floor.

Obviously, one such gap froze my water line.
So, I moved out the washer and the sink near the water line; broke open the floor around the water line; dug into the frozen dirt around the pipe and, put a small electric space heater in there. Nothing.
Until! Saturday afternoon, the water was working!
Yay!

That night, after Shabbos, I flushed the two upstairs toilets that I was using and… they didn’t flush.
Oy…

Through some experimentation with the sinks and the toilets and the bathtub and shower that are all connected to the same central sewer stack, I deduced that the sewer stack was frozen about the place where the clean out plug is in the corner of the common wall of the garage and basement near the outside wall. But, there was some small leak as the toilets would gradually drain from their overflowing state.
I spent Sunday trying to fix using hot water but, it did not work. At one point, I realized that my efforts were making the effluvia back up into both the shower pan and the bathtub upstairs. Yech…

But! Through that process, I determined that the blockage was in the Stack because all the downstairs toilet; tub; and sinks were Not backed and worked as they all drained into the sewer line lower down past the stack; as did the kitchen faucets.

And, the one bathroom sink faucet that drained directly into the stack Was frozen and not draining.

Okay! I then called up my professional plumber friends and we discussed solutions.
The easiest suggestion was to pour really powerful drain cleaner down the sink and tub drains and hope that heated up the blockage.
Mmmmm…. No. That was not a good idea.

I poured it down; let it sit; and then tried the hot water flush. Nope. It just backed up more into the shower and tub and this time, it did not slowly drain.
I effectively melted whatever which re-solidified at the blockage, making it more permanent.

So – clever boy that I am, I took my reliable little space heater – put it inside the cabinet of the one sink that did connect to the stack sewer pipe; and pointed it directly to the hole in the wall where it connected. I also put a space heater in the garage.
I figured I would let it sit overnight and maybe the drain cleaner and the heat would do its stuff.

When I woke up the morning – the water was gone from the bathrooms upstairs!
Yay!

And, when I went down to the basement…
The bathroom sink drain had definitely unfrozen, allowing all the water, and everything else, trapped upstairs to back up into the sink; overflow onto the floor; and… more or less drain into the new hole of the water meter that was a foot or so away… Yech.

Okay. No more Mr. Nice Guy!
I removed as much water from the downstairs bathroom sink as possible.
I removed the toilet in one of the bathrooms. And I poured several cups of ice melt down the floor drain and chased it down with a few gallons of water.

Went back down to the basement; emptied the sink that was filling up, now with blue ice melt water, until it stopped filling up.
I then repeated the ice melt process once more upstairs; emptied the downstairs sink, and started taking care of other things.

When I got home after davening the 2:45 PM Mincha at the Kollel, the downstairs sink still had blue ice melt water in it. The ice melt was not working.
(Oh, I had also turned up the house to 80 degrees all day, and turned on both heat fans in both upstairs bathrooms)
Fine – I went to Menard’s and bought the necessary stuff to remount the toilet and, I bought a motorized professional snake – and auger to root out the sewer stack.
And…………..
Voila!
When I returned home, the ice melt water was gone!
The plug in the stack MELTED!
Yay!

I confirmed this by turning on hot water upstairs for awhile and the bathroom sink downstairs did NOT have water backing up into it.
I then took my Super Duper Lye Drain Cleaner, which I had been afraid to use after the other stuff failed and, I poured it down the toilet waste line that is still open.

And, now, after about an hour, I shall flush with more hot water and begin the process of cleaning the floors; the tub; the shower; the sink; the toilets; the yech of everything everywhere and, then remount the toilet; super insulate the areas around the water supply line; fill in the floor; and reinstall the basement utility sink and the washing machine….
That should work.
(And – I can return the unopened snake!)

Oh – you want to know how the plumbing waste stack could freeze in the first place?
Good question.
In discussing this with my plumber friend, I remarked that one of the toilets actually “cycles” a bit a couple of times a day. In other words, a little bit water leaks out of that toilet a few times day – down the plumbing stack…
When a toilet flushes, the effluvia in a toilet doesn’t whisk away to the city sewer line, it falls to the bottom of the stack and pushes the previous stuff farther down the sewer line towards the street.
So, if there is “stuff” sitting in the sewer stack and, it is close to freezing and, you let it sit for a week in subzero temperatures and, you coat this stuff with a bit of water every several hours – for a week… It will continue to freeze and – make a solid plug in your sewer stack.

And, this is how we learn new things in This World!
Life is Beautiful All the Time.

(I wonder if I can get the Insurance company to pay for any damage?
Stay tuned.)