The Root of All Evil

Wouldn't you know it. Three weeks after we move in the sewer backs up. This is a common story. Fortunately it wasn't so bad. Of course it would happen the week that I was out of town. I don't know if I ever mentioned it before but when we bought this place, upon closing we discovered that the sewer had backed up and my very first job was wading through two inches of water and sewage in the basement in order to clean the place up.
Anyway, I rented a large drain snake on Tuesday and proceeded to snake the drain. At about the 50 feet mark the snake was kinked and I could not get it to go down the drain. It kept winding the coil in the rotating cage such that it would not pull out in order to be fed down the drain. This was frustrating because I had a luncheon speech and a neighborhood tour to do this same day, so I must have changed my clothes five times between various events. Eventually I gave up and went to bed late. On Wednesday morning I returned the equipment and got another to replace it. I rushed home and got the job done before 11:00 AM so that Elizabeth could go to her playgroup by 11:30! Good job I'm not afraid of dirty work.

Here were the results;

A pile of roots bigger than my hand



and the tell tale signs that the drain had been snaked!