Drainage
My Dad taught me how to rod a drain. I’ve maybe practiced those skills about three times. It isn’t actually the sort of thing that you want to practice a lot, although I realise that for some people it’s their job.
The last time I had to do this was last week. On Tuesday morning I got up and when I flushed the loo, I noticed that it was backing up. Now modern toilet pans should be able to contain all of the water from the cistern without overflowing, but it is always a bit alarming to see the water rising and thinking it isn’t going to stop before it does.
After the water had fallen back to a normal level, I flushed again. Same result. It seemed that my morning was going to change from the work I had planned to do to seeing what was wrong with the drains.
Now we’re in an 80 year old house with a private drainage system, this means that we have a cesspit rather than being connected to the main sewer. I’ve held that as sanitaryware has become more water efficient this isn’t always the best thing for such an aged system. It means that there is often more solids than liquids and it is the latter that makes for a happy cesspit.
Anyway I went outside and lifted the first of the inspection covers. The drains were “dry”, not completely so, but there was no water backed up. I went to the next one and lifted the lid and this was part full. I walked down to the end of the line and lifted the chamber manhole there and this too was dry. So basically I knew where the problem was. Of course on the longest run of the system!
There is a set of drain rods in the garage, that I’ve never used. There are 33 of them which you join together with a spanner and feed slowly down the drain, pausing to add a new rod each time you come to the end of the last one. I was wondering how many of the 33 I’d actually need. Turns out 32 is what I needed, I had to rod the whole length and I’m not exactly sure where the blockage was but I had to push it all the way to the end of the line.
Shitty job.
To help with the process I had filled the bath with cold water twice, to provide a bit of a head of pressure to push things along, this helped a lot but it still took me the best part of three hours to do this.
Those skills that I have though, the ones my Dad taught me. Invaluable. I’m not sure how much a professional would have charged to do the same thing, but I’m pretty sure I saved some money.
I’m hoping that is the first and the last time that I’ll have to do that, who knows. We’re careful about treating an old system gently.
Thanks for reading.