h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Fail.

It's happened again. And this time, Mr Vip was underneath the floorboards, shovelling out the wet stuff from last time, and noticed that the water in the hole he'd dug was filling up faster...

Had a call to say that the drain blockage company have received the call and will be out within 24 hours. Last time it was only about two, but no way of knowing what it'll be this time. *sigh*

Ugh.

At the moment, I'm housesitting my parents' place (they're in China for six months). I hope nothing horrible happens here: I really wouldn't be able to cope.

TRiG.

It's frustrating, and even worse when you're house sitting because you don't know what the house owner would want.

At least we know what we want, even if we're not sure what the insurance company will do yet.

Blockage is now cleared, and a clean up crew are on their way. And we had another person come round to look and to reassure us that they had us as a priority and they would keep pushing to make sure things got done. Bless.

The camera crew arrived - the camera that goes down the sewer, that is - and after a few hours exploring have found where they think is the blockage point - an unexpected u-bend couple of houses down . It also turns out that the plans that our water company had are incorrect, so it's not really a surprise that nobody had checked that manhole before - it was down as a storm drain.

The more I discover about these drains, the more sure I am that the system under our floors is actually a good one, as long as we make the pipe that junctions with the sewer one way flow only (in case of future sewer back ups).
It means that it is usually damp under our floors, but now we've unblocked one of the air vents (we discovered that it had been choked up with debris as a result of the cavity wall installation put in by the previous owners ) it should mean that normal air flow can be resumed. It's a system that works - as long as the vents remain clear!

Incidentaly the nice men also cleared out my storm drain. It looks like it was entirely the fault of poor workmanship from whoever laid the tarmac drive (before we bought the house) - the mortar from the bricks had just shedded under the weight of the cars driving up and down it. I don't know if we can repoint it ourselves or not but that's something to worry about in the future, not today!

There is something quite exciting about watching camera footage from people poking cameras down drains though. No idea why.

I think it's the hope that they'll find something really interesting.

Yes, and partly a little bit of fear in case they discover that it's something that's our fault... eep! Thankfully it wasn't, it looks like a more structural fault with the sewer itself, which means we don't have to pay to fix it. Phew!

Plus, it's something that's normally hidden away and you don't think about, so it's interesting to find out more about it. Or that might just be me...

Nope, learning about hidden away stuff is terribly interesting even if the thing itself is totally mundane.

Nothing like having a nice man clear out your storm drain, eh Vip?

Two, actually, one nice young man who was happy to dive headfirst down a manhole to clear out debris, and a lovely older Black Country-accented chap who would quite happily chat about the odd things they'd found in drains and Time Team and canals and such.

I gave them . Actually, I might see if they're still around - if they are they'd probably want more tea and if not, they were supposed to leave a calling card with the job details on it!

Well, this week should see us both with new wiring in our house underfloor (so it doesn't dangle into the water if it ever rises again) and a new soakaway system so that even if the drain backs up again it only goes <--this--> far and not in to my house. Yay!

Then next week to have carpet fitted in the front room and laminate flooring delivered, and then we have the fun task of putting that down between Christmas and New Year. Oh, the excitement.

It will be rather nice not to have to have to wear shoes in my own house. I much prefer to go barefoot if possible, but it's not good for feet at the moment - too many potential splinters and other nasties.

Ooh, hope it turns out really nice now!

I'm sure it will. It's just nice to know what's wrong and how it's all going to be fixed.

Still no report from Severn Trent Water though, despite them promising it would be sent to us Monday last week. This means that the insurance company won't say whether they'll cover anything. We think they'll cover some things but not others, but it would be nice to know which bits. We at least had permission from them to go ahead and fix stuff, which we were worried about early on. It would have been truly awful if we'd got to this point and we were *still* having to wait to find out what was wrong.

And finally, an end to the saga: they will cover all the damage, such as the flooring and electrical stuff, but not the root cause of the problem. That's just what we expected, and they didn't quibble over any of our receipts for the work we did ourselves either, which was nice.

25th November - 14th February. Thank heavens they gave us the go ahead for doing the work in the mean time.

What a huge relief it must be for you Vip, especially with the additional costs of buying baby gear for the first time. And a sense of security that you've found and fixed the root cause.

Babies need nice clean floors to roll on sooner than you think, so all that new carpet and flooring will be an additional benefit!

for you and

Lanzababy