Our drain line for the sinks and tub are clogged.

Since we live in a really old house out in the middle of BFE all our sinks, the tub, the dishwasher, and washing machine are on a separate drain line from the toilet. The toilet drains into the septic tank while everything else drains out through a buried line that runs out into the woods.

Legal? When the house was built that’s how they did things. Of course nowadays everything would go into the septic tank, but we’re legal to keep it the way it is unless we build on an addition and require new building permits.

This is one time I’m glad the toilet is separate from everything else because there’s a major clog somewhere. I first noticed something in the kitchen. I loaded the dishwasher, and as usual I rinsed a few things off before putting them in the dishwasher. After I finished loading everything I noticed not only did the water not go down, but some of it backed up into the other side of the sink. I thought the sink was clogged, so I dumped a bottle of drain cleaner in the sink and waited for it to do it’s magic. The bottle said give it 30 minutes for tough clogs, and after the water went down to run more cold water on top of it.

An hour later the water hadn’t gone down any, so I started talking to Hubby about scooping the water out of the sink into the bathtub so he could take the pipe apart under the sink. We hauled a bucket into the kitchen, dished the water out, and hauled the bucket ‘o water to the bathroom.

Me- Um, baby did you take a shower?

Him- No, why?

Me- Then we’re got a problem here.

Water had backed up into the toilet and the bathroom sink. That’s when I remembered I had both the dishwasher and the washer running. Whoops. Luckily the washer was still filling up, but the dishwasher had drained creating all the extra water that was backing up into the bathtub.

Hubby tromped down to the wood line with a flash light and confirmed that water is draining out of the line, but it’s moving at trickle pace. Just great. Now we’ve got a big mess on our hands, and we’ve got to get it taken care of immediately.

That won’t be happening tonight though. All this decided to go down around 10:30pm…on Sunday night…when the temperature has just dropped 30 degrees lower than it’s been every night this week…when Hubby has to go back to work tomorrow.

Figures. Isn’t that always the way it happens? Bad things never happen at the right time.

We hauled ourselves over to my Mom’s house around 11pm to grab showers. Now I’m hoping the rest of the water will continue to drain slowly throughout the night so Hubby won’t have a huge mess to deal with when he comes home tomorrow and goes to work hunting down the clog. He’s already going to have to deal with old insulation around the lines that probably contains asbestos that’s going to give us mesothelioma or something.

I just hope and pray the clog isn’t somewhere along the 100ft of buried line. If that’s the case we’re probably screwed until we can dig the yard up. Yeah, my Grandma will totally love that idea considering the drain line runs right under her flower beds.