Gimme some toilet lovin'!

Gah.

I finally decided that it's time for professional help. For the toilet, not me. I'm already getting professional help.

There's a guy I know, he comes recommended by others. We tried for three weeks to get him over to work on the sewer line. First he didn't come prepared to snake the sewer line (what part of "bring your sewer snake" didn't he hear?), then we missed an apointment and he went on vacation. When he got back, we rescheduled, but then he found out that his mom had hurt herself (third degree burns) and refused to take care of the festering wound. He had to babysit her at the hospital, then the burn ward, and then at follow-ups, and we just never managed to get him into my house.

He referred me to a "young guy I know who is good."

Okay, so "young guy" comes by, and to make a really long story short, he does manage to snake out my sewer line, playing in all 5 of the clean-outs he could find. "I got it!" he assured me, $90 bucks later. "I poured 10 gallons down the sewer line, and it took it all. You'll be good to go, now." How does he know it's exactly 10 gallons, I wonder, but not outloud. He knows his stuff, right?

I moved a pair of 5-gallon buckets out of the way, and I put the toilet back on, and heart swelling with joy and eyes burning with anticipation, I flushed it and got... no swoosh. The same darn trickle. A bowl that doesn't overflow, but doesn't give with the big satisfying, solids removing WHOOSH.

Bummity.

At least we can do laundry, right?

One roommate washed all her beach-sandy clothes and her bedding (wtf? Recipe for sandy sheets?) and gave the washer indigestion. It sat for a day, no-one wanting to move her cheese. I finally took pity, ungorged the machine, and tried to restart it.

No joy.

Nothing. No juice. No spin, spark or cycle. Oh, and I can't replace it with the "extra" laundry machine because another roommate has just craigslisted our duplicate, and it's gone down to Hayward. Sigh.

I figured out pretty quickly it only added hot water (oo! sluethmaster Bob). I traced the problem to the fact that someone had turned off the cold water line. Weird. I turned it on, and the washer immediately began filling and churning. Smart washer, eh?

Happy that something was easy, I went on my way for a few minutes. I came back to water gushing out the back of the machine and the floor rapidly becoming a wading pool. Crap! That's where we're storing all the laundry we haven't gotten around to doing!

I quick as a wink shut it all down, and diagnosed this problem as that the cold water line wasn't screwed onto the machine all the way. (wtf^2?) So I twisted it on, turned everything back on, finished washing my roommates sandy clothes and tossed them into the dryer.

My best guess is "young guy" aimed for the nearest source of water to fill those 5 gallon buckets to perform his inadequate test of my sewer line. So thanks to him, I soaked down a small mountain of laundry that no-one really wnated to do.

It's getting done now, though! Every cloud has a silver lining.

And I have a different, more highly recommended plumber coming tomorrow. To take her shot at the flushless toilet. The toilet is the current Sewer Libre Champion, besting at least 4 challengers so far. Can it go 5 and 0? We'll find out!