OK. So a few weeks ago, I noticed that the floor around our washing machine in the basement was a bit damp. I thought it was a fluke honestly. I’d never seen that happen before. The thing that concerned me more, is that our laundry usually sits in a mesh laundry thing right around that area, that would be susceptible to water soaking into it. Sure sure, its going in the laundry anyways right? but no, I’d rather not get things more dirty anyways, something might stain who knows. So I made mention of this to Laurie and said maybe we shouldn’t keep the laundry basket that close. I guess about the next week, when Laurie was checking on some laundry she was doing she saw it happen, and told me about it. I came down and we both saw it. Now I’m slow to get worried about things, sometimes way too slow, thats my own fault I admit it (realizing you have a problem is the first step right ha ha). Anyways we thought we were going to have to replace the washing machine or get it fixed or something, who knows. We didn’t know if it was leaking or what. So we started to make arrangements for a washing machine person to come over and take a look at it. But then i noticed something about where the water was. We have this drain in the floor right next to the washer. Its meant pretty much as a catchall drain if the basement floods I guess. There’s a big pipe right behind it that goes upstairs, and the basin next to the washer leads into this pipe as well as the drain pipe for the washer. A light bulb went on. So the next cycle, we saw foaming bubbles coming up the drain.

My first thought was our house is mad at us so its going to start not accepting its food and spit up on us. Whats next mud out of the shower? blood from the walls…. err no .. i guess not, this isn’t the money pit nor the shining. Anyways. I wasn’t 100% sure the washer was totally OK and it was a drain clog somewhere, but i thought it was likely. We did a whole other load and watched it happen, the next night. This time we didn’t do as large a water level, and sure enough we saw it drain right out.. go for a while and then the soapy water (no bubbles yet) came right up the drain, and up into the basin as well. SUCCESS i was right.. the only problem is, in some ways fixing the washer might have been a totally easier thing to deal with. Cause this drain goes into the ground I have no idea where its backing up. I’d imagine its not too far, considering it wasn’t that long until the water started backing up. I think the only good part about it was, that its not completely blocked, it seems it just can’t drain the water fast enough.

So here’s where it gets interesting. “Laurie, i need a hose” i say.

Lets get this thing fixed. I pull out a plunger, get a length of rope and a hard hat (with a cool flashlight on the front) and start to work. The first thing I did is that i changed the polarity on our vacuum cleaner so that it went from suck… to blow!. Then I got some duck tape and started taping a cone around the drain and capped off all of the other places that could possibly let out the air that i was about force down in the drain. Right as I’m about to hit the switch and let this beautiful contraption.

“Wait a minute”, Laurie said, ” You need a hose?”
“What” I said, “yeah a hose”.
“So does that mean I’m supposed to just jump up and get it for you?”, she questions back.
“uhhh .. hmm, well it was more of a statement than anything else.” I retort.
“right” she says, while extending the letter ‘I’ out for quite a while.

The vision of my reverse-vacuuming-clog-destroyer-duct-tape masterpiece begins to fade from my imagination.

“What do you need a hose for anyways?”, asks Laurie.
“Eh, don’t worry about it”, I say while giving up my hair brained scheme.
“If anything we need a plumber or Drain-O”, she suggests.

Yeah drain-o. Thats the ticket, a whole lot of drain-o!! So pretty much thats where it stands. We had some extra drain-o, around, so we put it all in the drain, and we don’t know if it made a difference. My thinking was that we didn’t have enough to get far enough in the drain system to where the clog is. It seems to be after the drain traps (you know the u shaped thing you see under the sink). Plus these pipes are wider, then the normal drain pipe, so I figured I needed to get a whole lot of draino to get past the trap and be able to drain down to the real clog. So i did that, and we haven’t done another load of laundry yet, mostly because we finished all the laundry we had, just figuring out where the problem was. Hows that for motivation to get things washed?

I’d say we have about 50/50 chances as to whether the drain-o worked or not. Laurie pretty much has written it off, but I’m still hopeful that it worked, though I realize that its not as simple a fix as when you have clogged drains for your sink or bathtub.

So I’m hopeful tonight’s laundry will have no problems, but most likely, we’ll be calling a plumber tomorrow.

… the reverse-vacuum-clog-destroyer thing i was going to make would have totally worked though .. no seriously it would have… I’ve got the drawings right here! .. let me scan them.. oh wait i don’t have my scanner right now ;).