Plumbing

It is 12:40 a.m., do you know where your plunger is?

Over the years I have transitioned from being something of a night owl, to becoming someone who is in bed by 10 p.m. and up at the crack of dawn — actually before dawn most of the year. The rest of my family stays up later and, on weekends, will happily sleep most of the day away.

I point this out not to be judgmental about their sleeping habits, but to give perspective, and it is relevant to the rest of my story.

Last Thursday night I had gone to bed as normal. According to my Fitbit I was asleep by 10:18 p.m. Precisely two hours and 6 minutes later at 12:38 a.m., I was woken up by my frantic daughter about it “raining” in the basement.

Since it had been storming as I went to sleep, I had nightmare scenarios of roof damage or the sump pump getting struck by lightning, becoming possessed by poltergeists or having some weird failure and turning into a fountain or some equally catastrophic breakdown.

What I found was not much better. A toilet had become clogged and was overflowing and flooding the bathroom.

The dad mode part of my mind that checks and turns down the thermostat when I enter the house and makes sure dripping faucets and lights are turned off questions how the sound of running water was missed with other members of my family awake and moving around within a 20-foot radius of the bathroom in question. This is especially true if the sound of running water is coming from an otherwise empty bathroom.

In an absolute sense, the amount of water was less than the dramatic situation that I was led to believe when I was woken up. It was enough to have worked its way to the heater vent and had seeped down around the floor vent along the ductwork causing the “rain.” Fortunately, the bathroom is located above an unfinished part of my basement that is used for storage.

Like many homeowners, we keep a supply of old towels around for just these occasions and with the help of some plastic tubs had the water mopped up, the floor cleaner than it has been in some time and towels in the washing machine on the sanitize cycle.

This left me the job of unclogging the toilet. This is an unpleasant task at the best of times, let alone in the middle of the night. It is entirely unclear to me why I was even involved. My wife and children are all extremely competent and resourceful people who are quite capable of thinking on their feet and at the very least doing a web search on how to unclog a toilet in the middle of the night.

When it comes to toilet clogs, time and judicious use of a plunger are often all that is needed — along with follow up discussions about what gets flushed and what gets thrown away. I still recall a memorable evening spent dealing with my much younger children attempting to flush an entire roll of toilet paper at one time.

As it was, the plunging proved fruitless and I knew that a trip to the hardware store would be needed to get a toilet auger to break up the clog.

The clerk at the store stopped himself from wishing me a good weekend when he saw what I was purchasing and instead expressed hope that my weekend would improve from there.

The worry was that the clog would prove to be the symptom of some hidden catastrophic failure. In a previous home, we had a tree root break into our sewer lateral and about a decade ago had to replace a collapsed lateral at our current home. I tried to remain optimistic, yet was a bit concerned that a clogged toilet would quickly balloon into a major plumbing project costing more than my college tuition.

The plus of coming into a situation expecting the worst is the celebratory relief you feel when things finally turn your way. I got home Friday afternoon and within minutes the auger had worked its magic. The gurglewhoosh sound of water flowing down the drain was music to my ears.

When your weekend starts with a backed-up, flooded bathroom in the middle of the night, everything is up from there.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.