Well, this day’s plans got thrown out the window.

I did get one thing planned accomplished. While doing my morning rounds, I used the foil insulation in strategic points on the outflow pipe for our emergency septic diverter. The pump has still not been triggered to empty the grey water, so this will ensure any contact point with cold supports will not freeze.

Hopefully. At least, if it does freeze there, it would be much easier to deal with it.

Once my morning rounds were done and breakfast was had, my plan was to head outside and start searching for something we could use to shelter the frozen septic ejector.

Then one of my daughters came over to let me know the kitchen sink was clogged. They’d started doing dishes, and the skinks would not drain. They did eventually empty, but very, very slowly.

My younger daughter – the only one able bodied enough to do this – cleared things stored under the sink to check the pipes.

She found this.

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Note the big crack in the brass fitting above the trap.

There was no way to take the trap off to clear the clog (drain cleaner did not work) without the brass breaking even worse.

Which meant a trip into town to get replacement parts.

That left me in a bit of a conundrum. The truck’s sensor issues are still a problem. I’d been idling the engine to get it to warm up and evaporate the moisture that is triggering the sensor, but the truck really needs to be driven. But the oil pressure gauge is at 0, and that check engine light was back on after I’d cleared the codes, yesterday. I could have taken my brother’s car, but he’s going to need that back, and this sensor thing isn’t going to go away if I don’t actually drive the truck.

But we’ve had so many things got wrong, I was really uncomfortable doing it. The truck had started fine, the engine is running smoothly, and the oil levels are good.

I ended up texting our mechanic and asked him is he was sure it was safe to drive – and to please humour my paranoia! 😄 He said yes.

I had wanted to go into town anyhow, to refill our water jugs, so I grabbed those and headed out, with a brief stop at the post office along the way. The letter mail I am waiting for still isn’t in, but a couple of packages made it, so that was good, at least.

The truck ran fine the entire trip, too.

Once at the hardware store, I got to talk to my favourite person in the plumbing department. He’s been helping me a lot!

After showing him the pictures, he gave me the parts and pieces to replace the brass T, making sure to get me the correct adhesive and explaining about putting it all together dry, first, then taking it apart to use the adhesive. We were pretty sure of the size needed, but if we were wrong, I could return the parts and get the right size.

From there, I made a quick stop at the grocery store to refill the water jugs, grab some pumpernickel bread, as the rye was gone, and ended up getting some lactose free cheese for the girls that was on sale.

When I got back, my daughter set about taking out the brass T – which turned out to have a lot more damage than was visible – then removing the trap to clear the clog.

It got rather messy.

Along with the parts and pieces, I picked up a drain clearer -, I don’t remember the proper name for it, but it’s a long flexible wire with a plastic scrubby tuft at the end. I also picked up a sink plunger. My daughter took everything apart and used the drain clearer on the pipes for as far as she could reach with it.

That got messy, too!

Then she put the trap back and moved on to putting together the new T pieces and do a dry install to make sure everything fit.

They didn’t.

It fit at the top, directly to one sink, and the bottom, to the trap. It was the pipe to the other sink that was the problem. The brass T’s fitting was almost flush, as you can see in the above photo. The new T’s fittings extended further. There wasn’t enough play in the pipe to be able to attach the T to the copper pipe.

That bit of copper pipe, meanwhile, was basically jammed into a length of PVC pipe, likely with the use of a heat gun. My daughter hoped to push it further in, just half an inch, but it just would not move.

Which meant cutting the copper pipe.

The 1 1/2″ copper pipe.

We don’t have a pipe cutter to do it. We could have used a hack saw, but the very idea of trying to cut a pipe in a crowded space – on that wiggles around, at that – was not acceptable.

Time to go back into town.

While my daughter was fighting with the new T, I had taken the time to clean the threads on the trap and was thinking it would probably be a good idea to get a new one. Just in case.

So, off to town I went!

By this time, several hours had passed, so my husband requested I make another stop at the grocery store for some heat and eats. No one was going to be making a from-scratch meal, today, that’s for sure!

I also brought along the brass T to show the guy at the hardware store. When I got there, it turned out he’d stepped out for something. I waited a while, looking at things and, after clearing it with my husband first (since it was coming off his personal budget), I picked up an indoor/outdoor security camera that screws into a light bulb socket, and has an LED light built in as well. This would go in the light socket near the septic pump, so we could monitor it without having to go up and down those insane stairs all the time! It used WiFi and an app to control and monitor it, and had a slot for a micro SD card. We have a couple of those handy!

They didn’t know when the plumbing guy would be back, so after I got the security camera, I went to the grocery store. It turned out to be really busy, and I found out why when I was asked if I wanted to collect extra points, or get 10% off.

I took the 10% off.

The plumbing guy was there by the time I got back. I showed him the brass part, and then pictures of my daughter holding the new T that couldn’t join the copper pipe.

After seeing more of the photos and how the copper pipe was installed, he was rather taken aback. That’s a pretty big no-no, and he was trying to figure out what was holding it in place. I told him, probably just friction. Why wasn’t it leaking? he wondered. I told him, that thing is NOT moving. It is completely water tight, and likely inserted with the use of a heat gun.

One thing was sure, though. I was not going to find a pipe cutter for a pipe that size. If we wanted to shorten it, we’d need to use a hacksaw.

He asked more questions about where the pipe with the copper piece led to, and I told him is was to the second sink.

Well, that gave us a solution.

He showed me a kit for plumbing a double sink. All the parts and pieces I would need, plus a few extras that wouldn’t be needed for our particular set up. He even took it out of the package and assembled it for me, how it would go under the sinks.

I talked to him about the trap, as I’d been looking at one that had a clean out opening. He agreed that would be the best. The only potential issue was the elbow part of it that joined the outflow pipe to the main drain. That part is sealed with adhesive. The U part of the trap screws onto that part and, in theory, we could remove the take off the new elbow and screw the U part onto the existing elbow, but with how old these parts are, the threads might not be the same. If they weren’t, we’d have to cut off the elbow and adhere the new one; there should be enough play in the pipe to handle losing that half inch or so.

There was a fitting that would be needed that I already had, with the parts and pieces of the new T we would no longer need, but I went ahead and bought another one. Having extra parts is always good!

This guy is such a help! It’s great to have staff that knows their stuff so well.

From there, it was home again. By this time, my poor daughter was really struggling. She may be the most able bodied of us all, but she does have other issues! Her PCOS really does a number on her joints, and she was losing her ability to use one wrist. I had suggested taking a break to have food, but since the dishes hadn’t been done, due to the sink being clogged, things to use to cook with were unavailable.

Plus, she just wanted to get it over with!

So I left her to it for a while, after bringing her what she would need to trim the length of pipe between the sinks to the right side, then started setting up the new camera before heading to the basement.

Long story short, I will probably be returning it. It simply will not connect to our WiFi.

*sigh*

It’s possible it might work somewhere not in the basement, but I bought it specifically so I could monitor the septic pump and area, so there’s no point in keeping it if I can’t use it there. There is nowhere else we would want to set up a camera that works by screwing into a light fixture.

Meanwhile, my daughter finally got to the point where we could test the sinks and see if anything was leaking.

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Nothing was leaking! Yay!

Since we’ve moved here, we’ve replaced both sink drains, and installed the flexible water pipes with build in shut off valves, replacing copper pipes with no shut off valves. Now, we’ve replaced the rest of the pipes under the sinks, up to, but not including the trap.

At some point, my daughter used the sink plunger. Apparently, it did an amazing job in clearing crud out.

As we were cleaning up and putting things away – it was full dark by this time – my daughter realized she was hearing splashing noises.

That test we did to see if there were any leaks?

The water had overflowed the washing machine drain in the entry, and was splashing all over the floor under the washing machine.

We grabbed a bunch of towels to soak up the mess as best we could without actually moving both the washer and drier (there is a single step just barely in front of the washing machine, so it can’t be pulled out without moving the drier).

My daughter decided to try using drain cleaner and poured some down the washing machine drain pipe – we have an extra long, flexible funny just to access this drain without having to move the washing machine. She set a times for half an hour, before boiling water would be poured down, then took a well deserved break.

I used that time to set up the basins to wash as rinse as many dishes as I could fit in the dish tray. Once that was done, the dirty water could be tossed outside, since we can’t drain anything down the kitchen sink, still.

Meanwhile, my daughter was able to set a couple of baking trays in the oven for some of what I’d picked up at the grocery store for them, now that access to the oven was no longer blocked by a took kit and all the stuff that had been stored under the sink.

My daughter finally got to eat, after about 14-15 hours.

While all this was going on, I kept my brother up to date. We are at a loss as to why this main drain pipe is so clogged. We had it routered 2 or 3 years ago. The first time it had ever been cleared in almost 50 years. Why is it clogged again after such a short time? And this badly! We’ve been trying to be diligent in making sure nothing goes down the drain that shouldn’t, like grease and whatnot, and using the bacteria and enzyme pipe maintenance stuff.

We do have that commercial drain auger my husband bought for me. We just don’t have what we need to be able to open up the main line in the basement, then seal it up again properly.

My brother wondered if it was possible there was freezing happening. The pipe runs past the old basement window. That window, however, is currently filled in with 3″ thick Styrofoam insulation on the inside, and on the outside, it has what used to be a “roof” above the window, now leaning over it for protection from the elements. That entire corner, on the outside, is well sheltered.

My husband’s bedroom is right above this area, though, and he says he can hear the gurgling in the pipes, and thinks the clog is near that window. He may be partially right. However…

After the drain cleaner got to sit for half an hour, my daughter went to pour boiling water down. She poured straight from the kettle, which is 1.7L

I don’t think she got more than a litre in before it started to overflow the pipe!

Which means the clog is practically at the bottom of the drain pipe.

This drain pipe has been here since the house got indoor plumbing in the mid 70’s. While there is a washing machine in the entry now, when the new part of the house was added on, my dad had a sink installed in the entry, so that they could wash up from working in the barn or whatever, before going into the rest of the house. Basically, it was a mud room. My mother apparently hated have a sink there, so when they stopped having cattle, she put something over the sink and taps, covered it with a cloth, and put decorative stuff on it.

I found the original sink, and the counter it’s in, in one of the sheds.

When my husband and younger daughter came out several weeks ahead of my older daughter and I, my younger daughter helped my brother turn the entry into a laundry room, taking advantage of the existing plumbing, so that we wouldn’t have to go up and down those horrible stairs carrying laundry all the time.

Have a mentioned, my brother is awesome?

He has also been asking me to take pictures of various parts of the plumbing to send to him. I have no intention of asking, but I suspect he plans to come out here to see what he can do. He needs to retrieve his car, anyhow, now that it seems our truck really is safe to drive and is running quite well, in spite of a sensor telling us otherwise. My brother knows how to do this stuff, and has the tools – but they are mostly here, and scattered in different areas.

The alternative is to call a plumber to clear that drain again. Last I looked, it was a flat rate of $300 for a drain clearing plus 1 hour of time. Parts and more time extra, if it turns out to be a bigger problem. That was a few years ago, and I expect the prices have had to go up, with how much more expensive things have gotten since then. I’ve tried calling that plumber a few times since then, left messages and never got return calls. We used this company because it was the only one that had the big drain auger – they cleared the floor pipe to the septic tank, the first time we called them. This time, though, we have our own auger, so really, we could call any plumber.

But not today.

After all that fighting with the kitchen plumbing – which did turn out to be necessary, considering the condition of things under there – we still can’t use our kitchen sink.

At least the line from the bathroom to where it drops down to the septic tank is clear!

I have no idea what we’re going to do at this point. Thankfully, my older daughter was able to help with covering the cost of vehicle repairs and paying the septic guy, but that can get used up awfully fast! Just the stuff I got today is only because she was able to help out.

As for me, I am just tired. Mentally tired. So very tired of things breaking down. It’s been more than a year of one thing after another, and even when things get fixed – like the ejector, or that sensor on the truck – it’s still an issue.

This is really starting to drain everything out of me.

Not that it matters. All we can do is keep chugging along, making do with what we have.

For now, that means things like doing the dishes in basins and dumping the water outside, and having an emergency diverter attached to our septic pump to also dump things outside.

I think I need to make myself go to bed early, and try to get some rest. Thankfully, I’m not the one that had to crawl around under a sink, so I didn’t have any major exertions. Just walking around with my brother as he was checking the expeller and installing the diverter did me in, unexpectedly. It has been a long time, but at about 3am last night, it caught up with me and I got hit with Charlie Horses again. This time, both thighs, all the way around. All I did was try to roll over in bed, and that was it. Thankfully, my daughters were up and heard me calling for help, and my younger daughter was able to bring me some ibuprofen (acetaminophen doesn’t help for Charlie Horses) and stay with me. The attack – and that’s exactly what it felt like – ended as quickly as it started, which was the weirdest sensation. After all this time, going to bed now feels as risky and driving the truck with that sensor issue!

I am so tired of this.

The Re-Farmer