211014 — Initiative without authority is trespass or vandalism?
On Sunday night, the kitchen drain slowed way down. I tried coaxing it with agitation from the garbage disposal, and that generated a bit of backwash debris coming back up, but it did not appear to speed anything up. By Monday it wasn’t moving at all. Went out to the local ChowMart™ and bought a half a gallon of drain de-clogger solvent and came home. Spent the rest of the day bailing the sink, dumping in solvent, and hoping for the best. Still no good. Repeated the process in accord with product instructions, all to no apparent avail.
Tuesday morning the sink was still filled. This time, I went to JohnBoy’s™ and scored another half gallon of solvent and spent that day repeating Monday’s dance. Went to bed with another weighty load on top of the plug, but upon waking on Wednesday the sinks were empty. A good sign, I thought, but I also realized that a very slow leak was not going to be good enough. I bailed the sink again, then disassembled the trap underneath, hoping to manually remove the clog in the gooseneck, but I was not so lucky. The trap was well scrubbed by the persistent solvent treatment, so I peered into the pipe disappearing into the wall and was faced with a painful decision. I could try untwisting a wire hanger and snake it myself, thereby risking inflicting additional damage to Sugar’s and Bud’s property. Or I could go to the hardware shop and find a drain snake and spend another day of mostly fruitless labor. Or I could surrender and contact a bonded plumber who might fix the problem in a matter of minutes and for only a few hundred bucks.
So I filled up the sink again, so that more pressure would rest on that clog, no matter where it was, and I would go look up plumbers on-line. After about two minutes of just sitting, trying to decide whether I was next going shopping for tools, or surrendering to the pros, I heard a characteristic gurgling from the kitchen. Walking back in, I found empty sinks again, so I tried filling them, but the drainage now seemed to be working just fine. So I tightened up the connections on the reassembled trap and decided to be grateful for my efforts that moved that clog far enough to the trunk so that it finally fell out while I agonized over sucking up an expense or risking greater damage.
Sometimes I actually do something right. But don’t let that around; I’ve got a well-earned reputation to protect.
12 April 2024 — Still no indication from the beneficiaries of my efforts that they were ever aware of this particular issue. And that’s probably a very good thing, too. Having learned over and over that no good deed goes unpunished, this could have been seen as an even greater offense than merely enduring a summer of tepid showers before having the water heater replaced. I remember how much consternation THAT evoked.