Saturday morning bright and early (6:00 am) David went down to Home Depot to rent a mini-backhoe, while waiting for Dave Hammerstrom to arrive to help out. When David got back Dave still had not shown up, but our next-door neighbor, Denny, was coming home from his night shift. When he saw what David was doing he got very excited and offered his help. Apparently, he used to do this sort of thing for his old work and he had a lot of fun with this.
Whoa! David trying to gain control of the beast.
Denny showing us how the pros do it.
In the half hour David had dug maybe a foot down. In minuets Denny got another 3 feet. :) Thank God for great neighbors!
They were only digging for maybe an hour when they found the issue...
There it was...the beginning of the end. Look at the crevasse, it's just completely hollow under there!
About this time Hammerstrom showed up to help expose the pipe. Of course David went in first to check everything out.
David's not smiling anymore! Something really smells down there!
Mmmm soup's on!
Apparently what had happened was that the pipe leading from our house to the sewer line had always been disconnected. Someone had had the bright idea at some point that the best way to fix the problem was to put a piece of board between the two pipes at a sort of "slide" to get the sewage to flow. Yeah, it's disgusting.
The board (or what was left of it) was quickly taken out and they made a makeshift pipe out of an old planter box, until we could get the plumbers to come out.
The three amigos.
They put caution tape and covered the hole. Need to keep the kiddies out of there.
The plumbers came out early this afternoon and were able to affix a proper pipe and we are now flowing smoothly. The inspector came out a few hours later and approved all the work. Hooray! Praise God, this could easily have been a lot more expensive then it was.
I'm happy to flush out this issue once and for all. (I'm sorry, I couldn't help it!)
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