Two days ago, I heard a loud gurgling sound. When I wandered into the kitchen to investigate, I stepped in water—a lot of water. I splashed past the kitchen table into the bathroom. Water was spouting out of the toilet bowl and cascading onto the floor—it looked like a possessed bidet. I’d love to say I stayed calm, reacted swiftly and handled the situation well. But instead of dwelling on what I didn’t do, here’s what I learned that fateful day:
1. Think before you plunge. The first thing I did was shut off the water supply to the toilet. The fountain continued. I attacked the toilet with a plunger. The fountain continued. It continued until the source—our upstairs bathtub—was completely empty. Despite the fact that the kid who was helping me had wet hair and a freshly-scrubbed face, I never thought to ask if there was water draining anywhere in the house. Yay me.
2. Soaker tubs are big. Too big. Our soaker tub holds about 60 gallons of water. That’s 59-1/2 gallons more than can be comfortably spread over a kitchen floor without causing heart palpitations and permanent water damage. I will be installing an electric fence around the tub to keep my kids away until I recover from this trauma.
3. Plumbers are like unicorns. I told my kids to not use the toilets, sinks or the tub until this problem was fixed. Then I frantically called every plumbing company in the area. The only one that returned my call told me they were booked for the next four days (a long time to pee outdoors).
4. Guys who “root” should be knighted. I’d like to give a shout-out to Reasonable Rooter. They arrived 40 minutes after I called, and the man—who looked more like a professional model than a plumber—had the problem fixed in one hour. I highly recommend this company (ask for the male model).
5. Trees can be jerks. The problem turned out to be a tree that had decided to punch a hole in the main sewer line leading from my house to the road. It’s now missing the chunk of roots that it had stuffed into my sewer line. I have no sympathy.
6. E. coli are invisible—so you never know when they’re really gone. There was toilet water on the bathroom walls, on the legs of the kitchen table and chairs, under the radiators and in the basement. It had bubbled up in the laundry room sink. It had even blown up through a weird vent pipe in one of the kitchen cupboards. It was on our shoes, on the bottom of buckets, and on every towel and mop we’d used to clean up the mess. I’ve scrubbed for hours, yet still feel like I should be wearing a hazmat suit. If your grocery store is out of bleach, I apologize.
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Ooh, my worst nightmare. I think you handled it a lot more calmly than I ever would. Kudos.
I didn’t mention the part (or parts) where I raced around madly, flapping my arms and trying not to cry. I probably didn’t handle it as well as you’re thinking, but thank you, Miriam!
Brenda
Having had a similar experience, I think you did very well. The big difference with us was that we had clean clear water to deal with as our problem was with a broken water pipe leading into the “water jacket” in the upstairs bathroom. The water covered all three floors in the house and caused a few thousand dollars in damage. However, the clean water was much easier to work with than what you had to mop up! Remember, we all learn from our experiences which means you will even be better prepared for the next time!!!!!!!! Did I just say that????
The very sympathetic “Forsyths”
All three floors – oh, no! I bet there was a moment during the clean-up when you were thinking “it would be easier to just sell the house.”
Did you say “next time?” Gah! I don’t even want to think about that!
OMG! That is my worst nightmare! Not just water, but toilet water. Ugh! You know those people that clean up after murders? That’s who I would have called to come clean! Lol! I would trust them to disinfect everything properly.
Cindy, that’s hilarious! I agree with you – toilet water, ugh. You know how exterminators tent houses and fumigate? I was wishing I could have this place tented and bleached!
Ugh! Had something like that happen in our old house. The one and only toilet overflowed, soaked the dining room light fixture and the dining room table, and proceeded to soak the floor and soak into the basement. Yeah, fun times with toddlers flushing a clogged toilet. The other flooding moment came during a bathroom remodeling that my parents were doing. My dad was trying to break up the tub to remove it and put in the new one. On his backswing with a claw hammer, he made contact with our one and only toilet. The problem was that it was a Sunday evening…and you can guess that the stores were all closed. Yep.
Oh, Sandy – that’s awful! In our last home, the upstairs toilet overflowed (and overflowed and overflowed….). I didn’t realize it was happening until I walked into the living room and saw water raining down from the ceiling and the light fixture. Indoor plumbing was a great invention – but also a horror sometimes, eh?