Merman
Active member
I'm going on record for the sh*tiest day ever....
Woke up late, coffeed up, chilled with the fam, casual breakfast, read the paper (but only the good parts), and just generally relaxed into the day.....
Wife and I are getting the kids ready to go the park.... "Let me just start the clothers washer before we go..." Almost out the door when I hear the sound.... The sound of plumbing gone bad.....Arrrrrghh
Sure enough the tub, sink, and toilet are filling up with black water as the clothes washer goes into the cycle. CRAP! Shut everything off. To top it off..... its Sunday.... at 2:00 PM.....
Now, my house was built post and pier style in 1962. It was originally designed as a summer season cabin and was never meant to be year round. Needless to say, I've got thousands of hours in this place to get it to the current state (which rocks by the way)....Over the course of time I have developed a love/hate relationship with my crawlspace which at the junction of all the plumbing is about 24 inches to the subfloor between the floor joists.
Anyhow, when the "houses" in my neighborhood were built, they used this certain kind of pipe for all the drain lines. It looks like tarpaper shaped into a tube and then baked till its hard. The oldtimers at the hardware said its called 'orangegrove' or 'orangebaum' or something like that.
I finally find the general area of blockage and start dissecting. My plumbing is mixed ABS, cast iron, and (evidently) this orangebaum stuff. It appears the turd is just before the junction of the toilet stack and maybe goes ??????? down the line.
So, I go to open the cleanout farthest away from the turd..... keep in mind there's probably 20-30 gallons of black water backed up in the system under gravity pressure. Sure enough..... I open the cleanout and the fitting breaks showering me with the foulest watery stench you can think of. The entire dirtfloor crapspace gets covered in shite! Now, the only thing I can do is bellycrawl through to make repairs.
I won't bore you with the gory details of digging up 10 feet of cracked and crumbling sewerline.... Turns out this 'orangebaum' pipe had cracked and a root had made its way up into the line and filled about four feet of pipe with roots and accumulated waste......NASTY!!! Now that's organic hydro! I grab some pliers and pull out a four foot long root entangled turd! Guess that last one I laid this morning after coffee did the system in.... 'Capt'n, she's gonna blow!'
After four hours swilling around in the muck, I was able to couple the 61/4" O.D. cast iron pipe to some ABS.
I almost called up Mike Rowe and asked him to bring the crew over.
:jawdrop:
F*cking Horrible!
Woke up late, coffeed up, chilled with the fam, casual breakfast, read the paper (but only the good parts), and just generally relaxed into the day.....
Wife and I are getting the kids ready to go the park.... "Let me just start the clothers washer before we go..." Almost out the door when I hear the sound.... The sound of plumbing gone bad.....Arrrrrghh
Sure enough the tub, sink, and toilet are filling up with black water as the clothes washer goes into the cycle. CRAP! Shut everything off. To top it off..... its Sunday.... at 2:00 PM.....
Now, my house was built post and pier style in 1962. It was originally designed as a summer season cabin and was never meant to be year round. Needless to say, I've got thousands of hours in this place to get it to the current state (which rocks by the way)....Over the course of time I have developed a love/hate relationship with my crawlspace which at the junction of all the plumbing is about 24 inches to the subfloor between the floor joists.
Anyhow, when the "houses" in my neighborhood were built, they used this certain kind of pipe for all the drain lines. It looks like tarpaper shaped into a tube and then baked till its hard. The oldtimers at the hardware said its called 'orangegrove' or 'orangebaum' or something like that.
I finally find the general area of blockage and start dissecting. My plumbing is mixed ABS, cast iron, and (evidently) this orangebaum stuff. It appears the turd is just before the junction of the toilet stack and maybe goes ??????? down the line.
So, I go to open the cleanout farthest away from the turd..... keep in mind there's probably 20-30 gallons of black water backed up in the system under gravity pressure. Sure enough..... I open the cleanout and the fitting breaks showering me with the foulest watery stench you can think of. The entire dirtfloor crapspace gets covered in shite! Now, the only thing I can do is bellycrawl through to make repairs.
I won't bore you with the gory details of digging up 10 feet of cracked and crumbling sewerline.... Turns out this 'orangebaum' pipe had cracked and a root had made its way up into the line and filled about four feet of pipe with roots and accumulated waste......NASTY!!! Now that's organic hydro! I grab some pliers and pull out a four foot long root entangled turd! Guess that last one I laid this morning after coffee did the system in.... 'Capt'n, she's gonna blow!'
After four hours swilling around in the muck, I was able to couple the 61/4" O.D. cast iron pipe to some ABS.
I almost called up Mike Rowe and asked him to bring the crew over.
:jawdrop:
F*cking Horrible!
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