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Just when one thought this apartment couldn't get much weirder, our building's infrastructure Issues have sunk to new depths: on Tuesday I awoke to find unexplained standing water with curds of lumpy dirt in it in the bathtub, and even as I watched I saw a murkier cloud burbling improbably up out of the bathtub drain. I found this sufficiently alarming to warrant a report to the landlady, who wasn't in, and then to Mum at work, who agreed that this was a handyman-level Situation so for the love of God would I try to tidy up the leaning tower of laundry? (And while I was about that, I frightened Weasel into falling in the tub, which meant running through the house until I was finally able to corner her and give her a good damp-mopping, which she was not happy about.) When we did manage to get hold of the landlady, the plumber-simulant had already gone home for the day, so I was advised to be ready to let them in "first thing tomorrow", which turned out to be a quarter to one -- which is ordinarily what I'd prefer, really, except that I'd woken up when Mum's alarm went off before six AM and had to spend the whole of the morning trying not to fall so far asleep as to not hear the door, which naturally meant waking up every time the cats thumped around and not getting any rest anyway.
By the time the workmen showed, the tub had filled to a depth of about six inches of questionable water, with clear flow-patterns of black gunge around the drain. They plunged at it for a few moments, which only served to stir the water into a cauldron of muck, and then decided that they were going to have to snake it from the access-panel side. Which has a bookcase in front of it. {alarm expressed by tenant.} "No, really, we have to get at the standpipe..." Moving of furniture ensued, and for the next two hours things went like this:
{snake snake snake}
SNIP: *crazed*
{snake snake snake}
WEASEL: *ded*
{SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE}
WEASEL: *more ded*
WORKMEN: Hm, let's try from downstairs...
SNIP: Oo, an unguarded hole to fall in!
WORKMEN: ...the hell?
{SNAKE SNAKE}
{bail bail}
{snake}
SAM: *wipes up spillage from bailing to keep cats from tracking it around*
WORKMEN: Hey, let's try the compressed air pump thingie...
I missed precisely what happened next, because I'd gone to sit in the kitchen to get away from the noise, but shortly after one of them mentioned trying the "P-trap", voices raised in alarm broke out; I went to see what the shouting was about, and discovered that apparently the P-trap is something to do with the small round plate in the floor beside the bathtub, which had suddenly projectile-vomited black ooze all over our bathroom. The workmen were quite chagrined by this development, not least because this is probably the final bit of proof they need that the building is actually demonically possessed.
They snaked some more and ultimately came up with a clog from somewhere farther on in the outflow system that appeared to be made up of some eighty years' worth of hair. (One does wonder if this is why the bathtub has never really drained very well.) It is to be presumed that our sudden backup was the wastewater from an upstream neighbor's shower not finding a pathway on out to the main drain, although the filth of it is anyone's guess.
The workmen cleaned up the bathroom as best they could, although it'll still need a proper scrubbing -- to give one some idea of the extent of the mess, the tall one was apologizing about not being able to reach the splatters on the ceiling... (To which I pointed out that it hardly matters aesthetically considering how badly the plaster up there is peeling to begin with.) They did do a nice job of re-taping the access panel back in place before replacing the bookcase, once I mentioned that it had been taped up because of the mice. They've also promised to have the landlady give us a free laundry-smartcard, given how the pipe managed to barf upwards into the hamper, which I thought was rather decent of them although the laundry was already awaiting a trip over to the coin-op laundromat down the street with the really big washers, because it's full of blankets. But whatever.
Total time elapsed: 5 hours awaiting workmen, 3 hours babysitting workmen, unknown period to be spent cleaning up after workmen. And it's just a good thing we hadn't changed the catbox the previous night, or we'd be really cross...
By the time the workmen showed, the tub had filled to a depth of about six inches of questionable water, with clear flow-patterns of black gunge around the drain. They plunged at it for a few moments, which only served to stir the water into a cauldron of muck, and then decided that they were going to have to snake it from the access-panel side. Which has a bookcase in front of it. {alarm expressed by tenant.} "No, really, we have to get at the standpipe..." Moving of furniture ensued, and for the next two hours things went like this:
{snake snake snake}
SNIP: *crazed*
{snake snake snake}
WEASEL: *ded*
{SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE}
WEASEL: *more ded*
WORKMEN: Hm, let's try from downstairs...
SNIP: Oo, an unguarded hole to fall in!
WORKMEN: ...the hell?
{SNAKE SNAKE}
{bail bail}
{snake}
SAM: *wipes up spillage from bailing to keep cats from tracking it around*
WORKMEN: Hey, let's try the compressed air pump thingie...
I missed precisely what happened next, because I'd gone to sit in the kitchen to get away from the noise, but shortly after one of them mentioned trying the "P-trap", voices raised in alarm broke out; I went to see what the shouting was about, and discovered that apparently the P-trap is something to do with the small round plate in the floor beside the bathtub, which had suddenly projectile-vomited black ooze all over our bathroom. The workmen were quite chagrined by this development, not least because this is probably the final bit of proof they need that the building is actually demonically possessed.
They snaked some more and ultimately came up with a clog from somewhere farther on in the outflow system that appeared to be made up of some eighty years' worth of hair. (One does wonder if this is why the bathtub has never really drained very well.) It is to be presumed that our sudden backup was the wastewater from an upstream neighbor's shower not finding a pathway on out to the main drain, although the filth of it is anyone's guess.
The workmen cleaned up the bathroom as best they could, although it'll still need a proper scrubbing -- to give one some idea of the extent of the mess, the tall one was apologizing about not being able to reach the splatters on the ceiling... (To which I pointed out that it hardly matters aesthetically considering how badly the plaster up there is peeling to begin with.) They did do a nice job of re-taping the access panel back in place before replacing the bookcase, once I mentioned that it had been taped up because of the mice. They've also promised to have the landlady give us a free laundry-smartcard, given how the pipe managed to barf upwards into the hamper, which I thought was rather decent of them although the laundry was already awaiting a trip over to the coin-op laundromat down the street with the really big washers, because it's full of blankets. But whatever.
Total time elapsed: 5 hours awaiting workmen, 3 hours babysitting workmen, unknown period to be spent cleaning up after workmen. And it's just a good thing we hadn't changed the catbox the previous night, or we'd be really cross...