Not Good

Yesterday when I got home from work, I called the plumber.  He was out on another call, but his wife said he'd come as soon as he could.  I waited and waited, and finally called Beverly and asked if I could come take a shower at her house. 

Today,  the plumber's wife called and said he was on his way.  He got to the house, and I showed him where I thought the problem was.  He poked around a bit, and the news is not good. 

Let me tell you, plumbing has gotten a lot more sophisticated these days.  The plumber -- I'll call him Daniel, mainly because that's his name -- has this little camera on a cable.  He was able to run it through my sewer pipes and see -- literally see -- what the problem is.  He also has this other detector thing.  He can run the camera into my pipes and use the detector thing, which kind of looks like a metal detector, to find it.  He holds that over the ground and it beeps.  It has a digital screen which shows exactly where the camera is and how deep it is. 

That's the cool part.  The not so cool part is, when he ran that camera down my pipes, he could see that my pipes were cracked for several feet.  Then there was one spot where it had completely broken. The broken spot was letting dirt fall into the pipe, and when mixed with the sewage, made mud.  That's what was clogging up my pipes. 

The even less cool part is that the broken spot is right under my patio.  He's going to try to shift my concrete slab over, but isn't sure he can do it without breaking it.  I told him not to worry about it if he can't save it.  I'll get someone to repour me a bit.  Or I may buy one of those molds and make my own with QuickCrete. 

Anyway, Daniel has to call that number to check for underground gas/phone/etc lines, which can take up to 48 hours.  He said he was going to make an emergency request so that they will have it done in 24 hours.  He doesn't think anything will be buried where he needs to dig, but he still has to make that call and get an authorization.  It's like a law or something. 

He cleared the mud out of the pipes, so I can at least flush now, but I'm still taking baths at my cousin's house for the next couple of days.  I told him when he's ready to start, just come on out, even if I'm at work.  He shouldn't need to get inside the house, but Bev and James have a key if for some reason he does. 

Then Daniel told me a story of how he went to fix a lady's shower.  She wasn't going to be home, but said she'd leave the back door unlocked for him.  He went into the house and began working on the shower, when a guy came walking down the hall.  Daniel introduced himself and told the guy why he was there.  They guy said to go ahead, so Daniel fixed the shower and didn't think about it until later.  That's when he found out the guy was robbing the house!

He had to go give a statement and describe the guy.  Yes, they caught him, but it was just weird. 

Tomorrow, I'll have to call the realtor's office.  She had told me something about some homeowner's insurance that the seller is supposed to buy.  If anything goes wrong with the house within so many days, they have to pay to have it fixed.  Since this isn't something that happened overnight, and I've only been in the house a month, it should be covered by that warranty. 

Frankly, with all this going on, I haven't even thought about painting.  I'll get to it, but first things first.