I don’t know that this winter has been any worse than previous winters (it’s certainly worse than our mild winter last year), but I’m sick of winter for this year and ready for spring.
It seems like pretty much every weekend I’ve been moving snow, and this weekend will be no different. We’re in a midst of another snowstorm that’s leaving 4+ inches of new snow on the ground.
It’s extremely treacherous outside too because of the many freeze/thaw cycles and winter rains we’ve had this year. The ground is covered in most places by a sheet of ice.
I’m also starting to run out of places to pile snow. The piles have gotten big enough that my tractor loader isn’t big enough to get the snow to the tops of the piles any more.
So far this winter I found I froze part of the radiant heat system in the new building and then our septic system went on the fritz. Dealing with the weather and the problems it has created has taken my time that I would have preferred to use working on other projects.
As the house flooring project evolved into something more complicated, the distractions made by the other problems we’ve had has allowed me to make little progress on the flooring. I started cutting out sections of damaged subfloor and replacing them, but now concede that we’ll have to use floor leveling compound in some places.
The overflow alarm went off on the septic system again last week so we had to have it pumped out again. Our septic pumping serviceman had told us the drain line was likely frozen, so Kim had made some calls to sewer cleaning services a few weeks before and had been quoted prices of $450 and up for the job.
At that time we had hesitated to commit to the clean-out price. After all we figured since we were only charged $200 for the pump out, that we would be able to have the system pumped out twice more for what it would cost to have the drain line cleaned, and by then it might be warmer weather and the drain line might have thawed on its own.
But it was only three and a half weeks later and the septic alarm went off again, indicating the system was full. It was a week shy of how long I thought we would have between required pump outs, and the weather forecast indicated no end in sight to the cold weather. We were going to have to re-think our decision to delay the clean-out service.
We called our septic pumping service again and after he was done pumping he came to our front door to talk to us about question we had about our previous bill.
We were confused about the “Emergency Service Call” listed on the bill as he had told Kim that he wouldn’t charge us for an emergency call. After the septic alarm went off we had called the septic service on a Sunday during one of our many rain/ice storms and he didn’t come out until the next day to pump.
He clarified the billing and was clearly annoyed, either by our questioning the bill and/or the second call to pump out our broken septic system. I told him how much Kim had been quoted for the clean-out service and he disputed the quotes. Maybe he thought he was doing us a favor by pumping out or system in the middle of winter, but he was getting paid after all.
He suggested that I disconnect the pump from the drain line and that might help the drain line thaw. He also suggested jury-rigging some plumbing to pump the effluent into the drain line from the pump in an attempt to thaw the drain.
I had a day off from work a few days later, so I worked on disconnecting the pump and figured I’d try his suggestion to thaw the line. The day was forecast to be just around freezing, but there was another front moving through with much colder weather following.
I got the pump disconnected from the drain, but before I’d tried to thaw the system myself I realized with the colder weather coming it would be best to call a drain cleaning service and get the system fixed quickly and properly.
So I called a few sewer cleaning services asking for quotes. They ranged from a few hundred dollars as a base fee to over $600, charging by the hour. If the drain line was frozen some distance from the lift tank it could turn into an expensive endeavor.
The service I asked to come out was called Jetter-Clean (they were the most reasonable of the lot, charging $199 for the first hour of work plus travel costs and were only about 10 miles away in nearby Lakeville). According to their website the owner built and patented his own pump trucks.
About an hour after I called the Jetter-Clean truck arrived, but by then the wind was picking up and the temperatures were already dropping.
The Jetter-Clean system uses pressurized water in a hose with a nozzle with jets on both the front and back of the nozzle. The jets on the back of the nozzle push the hose up the drain line (while cleaning the sides of the drain line), while the jets on the front of the nozzle spray on the clog.
I watched as he worked on the drain and about 50 feet up the drain line he hit something but said he wasn’t getting the feedback typical of a frozen drain. In addition, I noticed that there was a lot of water draining back through the 4 inch corrugated pipe that the 1 1/2 inch drain line sits inside of. I interpreted that to mean our drain line might be broken.
He called back to the office for advice and they told him to keep trying.
In the meantime our lift station tank was rapidly filling up with the water that he was pumping into the drain line. When I asked him what we did when the tank filled up, he assured me that our septic tank held more water than in the tank in his truck. But with all the water he had just added, if we couldn’t fix the problem it might mean only a week or two before the system would need to be pumped out again.
After working for about an hour without any real progress he mentioned he could snake a video camera up the drain line (at an additional cost of course). Since we needed to know what was going on, I told him to run the camera.
Unfortunately when he ran the camera my worst fears were realized – our drain line was broken. An inline rubber Fernco type coupling had come apart separating the drain line about 50 feet from the septic tank.
The white pipe is the 1 1/2 inch drain line, and with the separation you can see the black 4 inch corrugated pipe it sits inside of.
The spot of the break is buried beneath one of my large snow piles as well.
It begs a couple of questions. First, why was the Fernco coupling there to begin with? Normally the sections of sewer pipe are simply glued together. Second, is the line frozen further up that caused the back-pressure that separated the coupling?
The snake camera also showed another spot in the drain that looks like a hole in the PVC at a joint that we should probably replace.
Regardless, it’s an expensive failure, considering the pump-outs, drain line cleaning fee and the repair itself, and the repair will probably have to wait until spring. We’ve already paid about $740 for the two pump-outs and the cleaning attempt and snake camera.
To top things off, Kim had a bad bout with the flu this last week that sent her to the doctor where she found she also had a sinus infection. She was concerned about me getting the flu from her, but I’m pretty sure that I had the flu about a month ago (although my symptoms were different than hers).
So at least for now it looks like our bad luck of 2013 is going to continue…