csammisrun

I live on the bottom floor of a three floor apartment building. Drain pipes leading from the upper two floors naturally all go past my pipes before waste water flushes away into the sewers to nourish the Morlocks and whatever else is living down there.

Unless there’s a clog, in which case it all comes to visit Chris.

Thursday night, I heard a loud gurgling coming from my kitchen. Both halves of my kitchen sink are half-full of greasy gray hot water. “Well that is not good at all,” I say, and fetch my plunger. This had no effect whatsoever, and I sat there contemplating the situation before I finally decided to call the night maintenance line. About twenty minutes later, the maintenance guy comes over and does not like what he sees (surprise). We fiddle with it for a while before he decides to pour some sulfuric acid drain declogger into the mix. This has absolutely no effect, and now I have a sinkful of greasy gray hot acid water.

Right about then, the upstairs neighbor’s dishwasher cycles. Cue a rapid rise in the amount of greasy gray hot water in my sink - aaaaand it overflows onto the counters and floor. The maintenance guy runs out to his truck and grabs a shop-vac to start suctioning the water out, I grab a metal mixing bowl and a five gallon bucket and start bailing (keep in mind the water is both hot and slightly acidic). Once we get the flood under control, he runs upstairs to ask the neighbors not to do anything else in their kitchens, then calls the night plumber - who can’t make it until midnight. Well, what can you do? He left the shop-vac with me in case of any other emergencies, and I waited up for the plumber. He came around midnight, as promised, and had the clog clear in about two minutes with the aid of his power auger. Turns out the clog was a combination of hair and mop fibers. I thanked him, he left, and I shut the cats out of the kitchen and went to bed.

Damage surveying started after work yesterday. The entire kitchen floor had a greasy film on it, as did the counters and anything sitting on the counters. I wiped down the floor, washed down the counters, and salvaged what I could, but the effects of greasy hot acid water on the [mostly plastic and metal] items sitting in my sink were not good. I ended up losing:

• Two knives, a boning knife and a chef’s knife
• A cutting board
• An herb shears (goddamn it, those were new)
• A collander
• A mixing bowl
• Basically everything that was in the sink that wasn’t glass

There are two upsides to this story. First, it makes me glad I live in an apartment, as I did not have to foot the bill for a plumber to come out in the dead of night to deal with this - the corollary being that I sure as hell did not wash hair and mop fibers down my own kitchen sink. Second, Linens ‘n’ Things is doing a huge going out of business sale, so I can probably replace much of what I lost at a low low price. Plus I wanted a new cutting board anyway. THE END.