80 year old plumbing

Just before the holidays, our basement tenant told us about a not-so-pleasant smell that had started burping up from his toilet. Yuck! Around Dec 23 we thought we could smell a super bad fart up in our master bedroom. Neither of us had let one rip. Where did that smell come from? We suspected it was the burping toilet sending its strong fumes up the heating vents.

By Dec 26 I had discovered two small messes on the floor of the basement shower. Sewage back-up! We made a call pronto! On Dec 27 two strong Russians were digging under our porch.








They dug about 7 feet down to reach the old clay trap for our very old house. At a certain point they asked us to flush all the toilets twice. We went outside to check out the flow in the hole under our porch. One of the guys said, 'It was like Niagara Falls! It was really backed up in there!'. I said, 'Ya, but the American side, not the Canadian side.' We all laughed.

And then I wrote a cheque for almost $2800.

Hubby was a bit down about the whole thing initially, but before long we both acknowledged that it was the best of a worse case scenario. At least it didn't flood our basement.