Picture this. You're getting ready to put glass gravel in your patio pit (a whole other story). The plan for this involves accessing the backyard through the side yard. You happen to notice that the cap to the next-door neighbor's sewage pipe has come off and there's some overflow in the yard. Gross. But at least the cap is off meaning someone must've taken it off and is therefore aware of the problem and is going to fix it pronto. Right?
Day 2 and 3 and 4 go by with no sign of anything happening except more sewage seeping into the yard. The day comes where we're going to back truckloads of glass up to our back gate to make moving the glass easier. It's then that we notice the extent of the nastiness. I'll spare you the details, but let's just say this is raw sewage. As in every toilet flush has just emptied into the yard. You get the picture.
So we decide since our neighbor is elderly, maybe she doesn't know. Maybe nothing's being done. We don't enjoy the raw sewage so we figure, we'll just call the plumber, have him unclog her pipe and we'll foot the bill if necessary.
We call the plumber and he comes out and clears the pipe. Good news. And our neighbor wants to pay for it. Better news. Only problem? Plumber #1 leaves without cleaning up. Hmmm.
What to do? There's a sewage swamp creeping ever closer to our side yard. Surely that's not sanitary. Surely there are procedures for these things. So we call the plumber back and ask him ever so politely what one does to clean up such a mess.
His advice is to let it dry out, then mow over it sending it into tiny pieces that will just blow everywhere. Seriously. Not kidding. Oh and at the end he throws in a "the health department would recommend that you throw some lime on there too."
Really? I mean really. Give anyone a pop quiz. Put on there something like:
"What would Kelsey's worst nightmare be?"
1. Cleaning up a year's worth of dog poop.
2. Having raw sewage in the vicinity.
3. Changing the diapers of a child with a stomach bug.
Most people who know me would say #2 (again, no pun intended) is like the worst option by far. I'm sure there are worse things in the world. I know there are. I know third world countries deal with this kind of thing every day. Does that help me feel better? No. Call me spoiled. Call me sheltered. Call me blessed. But please also call me someone to come clean up the POOP IN MY SIDE YARD!
So we call our sweet little old lady neighbor and mention that the plumber didn't clean up. She said she would call the woman in charge of her estate, but she's going out of town. We say no biggie, we'll take care of it. Before we can call anyone, she calls back and says someone is on their way to take care of it. Sweet!
Um. Not so sweet. Whoever was put on the job of "taking care of it" thought that just spraying everything down with a hose would fix the problem. It's already wet people. It's sewage. So disappointing.
We're getting ready to go out of town. What in the world do we do? Well, let's try putting lime on it. The health department is probably a knowledgeable resource in these types of situations. We go to Lowe's. Lowe's has lime in 50 pound bags. I'm all for getting a whole bag and spreading it on every inch of lawn but Matt said that was unnecessary.
BUT, you know how those big bags of stuff like cement or whatever inevitably break open and spill out? Well, there was some spillage. We found the helpful Lowe's people and asked if we could just buy the excess. They scooped it up in a bag for us free of charge. We love Lowe's.
So we get home and Matt spreads the lime on everything and we go out of town, hoping by some miracle somebody did something by the time we get back.
Nope.
So now here we are, watching the grass grow ever taller. Thankful for the rain because our grass is growing, not so thankful because her grass is also growing. The time for mowing is getting closer by the day. It's like a countdown to poop confetti.
Matt and I discuss our options. My sweet husband calls septic people, other plumbers, and even water clean-up people to find out what one does in this situation.
We found out plumber #1 should've cleaned up. Other plumbers said that would've been their procedure. Good to know. We then set out to find a plumber who will clean up after plumber #1. We find one. Praise the Lord!
And that catches us up to where we are now. In the course of this blog post, plumber #2 came and there was all sorts of confusion. They thought we needed the pipe snaked. We didn't. Just clean up. I heard, "This is a very unusual situation" (if I only had $1 for every time I heard that in my life) and "I'm not sure how to handle this." Plumber #2 says he doesn't feel ethical about charging for a whole service call just to clean up the mess. Great. We settle on $40. Then his boss shows up in a sketchy white van. Nice man. Sketchy van. Anyway, no go. It'll be a full service charge of $90ish. Ouch.
At this point, I'm in a Brian Regan "dispatch the truck" moment. There's a man willing to make all my sewage woes go away. I'm thinking "it's fine. I understand. Just please don't leave without cleaning this up. You can have whatever you want." No wonder plumbers can charge so much. I'm cheap. And even I was willing to pay.
So the plumber and his boss have a convo out by the van. They determine that they will snake the pipe again just to make it worth the money. I'm thinking that's great. Turns out there were more leftover roots in the pipe that would've caused an issue later. Praise the Lord again.
And that brings us to the end of our sewage ordeal. The plumber cleaned up, taking with him a whole bag full of nasty, then he snaked the pipe and took off. Our neighbor paid for everything even though we offered to foot the bill.
I'm praising the Lord for taking care of this in the end and for teaching us some lessons along the way. I'm also thankful for plumbers. Could never do that job. Ever.
Moral of the story...call a good plumber and insist on full service. And if you see sewage in a yard, don't wait. It only gets worse.
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