This last Saturday night, we found a disaster going on in our house. I was at work about to come home, and Nate went downstairs at 7:30pm to feed the kitties. He was barefoot and noticed that the carpet in there was squishy and wet. "Oh Crap!" right? So he went into the utility room and noticed we were having a little flood in there. It was about 1/3rd of the room and about half an inch deep. And it was actively dripping from that little white pipe towards the ceiling that you see in the 2nd picture. This is the house pipe that goes into the main city sewer line...and it was backing up! Disgusting! So it was leaking "black water" out into our utility room...and it was soaking through the wall into the carpet in the kitty room and closet, and it was soaking up the walls into each adjacent room. MAJOR problem! So I got home as fast as I could. After 8pm, Nate started calling 24 hr Roto Rooter Plumbing services. He found one that could come about 11pm, so I went to bed and he stayed up for them.
The plumber came and opened up a big valve into the pipe, and out falls this disgusting silver metal ring (like you would put on a showerhead) that was completely compacted with black gross toilet paper. It all goes back to the "Fix N' Flippers" again. They must have knocked that ring into the pipe that had NO business being in there. And it had sharp edges on the upper portion of the ring, so for the last 2-3 years, every time toilet paper would go by there, it would shred it just a little and started compacting and corroding it little by little. Nate said it was the grossest thing he's seen in a while. The flippers just didn't give a damn that it was in there. But now it back up our sewer pipe and came out into our possessions. The plumber told Nate this was a "Category 3 Hazardous Waste" clean up and we needed to hire a professional company to come clean this up and tear down the dry wall and it would probably be $3,000. He did the temporary fix and then left and Nate went to bed.
The next morning, Nate stayed home to call companies and call our insurance USAA, while Johnathan and I went to church to get away from it all. Nate read many reviews and picked the best company with rave reviews called "Delta disaster services". They were coming around 2:30pm that day (Sunday). He called USAA and found out our deductable was $1,000, and they would pay for items that were lost.
So when the company came out, they told us that this "black water" is so nasty and hazardous, that anything porous that it touches, basically has to be thrown out immediately. It wasn't worth the effort at all to try to clean it, because it's almost impossible to get it all sanitary. So, very sadly (I almost cried), our casualties were: 1. Our Christmas Tree that we bought just last Christmas and spent A LOT of time searching for. It was in a box and the box was completely soaked. Could not salvage it. 2. Our Jungle Jumperoo for babies. It's the thing you put a older baby in to jump around and play with things to make music. That was completely soaked. 3. A second Pack N' Play that we had....soaked. 4. A pair of Nate's tennis shoes.
Then the most annoying one was...my breast pump was right on the line of if we should keep it or toss it. It was stupidly sitting on the carpeted floor in the closet in the kitty room. The carpet was damp, and the bottom of the pump was sitting on it, but it wasn't wet itself. There showed no signs that it was wet. But it is really risky because this is what you use to pump milk out and feed directly to a little baby. So could cause mastitis or disease. But the guys that worked for this company were also on the fence about it. So Nate called USAA about it and they said if it did not show any visible signs of being damaged and you could not prove it, they would not cover it. And this is a $300 pump! So we ended up deciding to keep it...clean it all over really well...and hope that we are right (that it's fine). So I took out all the stuff and soaked the bag in oxiclean for 24 hours and cleaned each part individually. We think it should be find but we had a lot of anxt about it.
So, the company put up containment plastic all over our basement (as you can see), they put fans down there and a dehumidifier to dry it up. They ripped out the dry wall and cut out half the carpet from the kitty room. That's all gone. They've come every day this week until today. It is now all dry and sprayed with cleaning fluid. Tomorrow they are coming to "seal" the foundation wood. Then on Monday, the construction consult happens and the next couple of weeks, they will be working on construction to rebuild everything. That same company does it all. It has been a HUGE headache! I'm very sad about the stuff we lost, but hopefully we will be able to replace them. And it's been scary to think we could get diseases from all of this. We've had to really try to keep Johnathan away...and we also moved all the kitty stuff upstairs so they don't go down there. The plumber will come back to really fix the pipe when it's all done. And he said that would cost about $1,700. So our total cost for this horrible problem will be $2,700. Cutting big into our savings...and we get nothing out of it (other than cleaning up something that should have never happened). We definitely could use any good thoughts or prayers from our friends and family. Thanks guys. I hope this never happens to anyone I know. -Angie Pennock
