BS: The Mother of all BS threads

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 12:19 PM

You might want to see if you can rent a small SeeSnake somewhere--it will show you exactly what you're up against.

(Full disclosure: SeeSnakes are distirbuted by Ridgid Tool Comapny, Illyria, IL, and manufactured by SeekTech, Inc., San Diego, where I am gainfully employed.)

They are very robust pipe inspections systems with smal cameras with LEDS lighting the path, attached to the end of a cable.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Acme
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 04:03 PM

I went the path of lease expense--I picked up a 25' snake for about $12 at Home Depot. I came in to check out information on traps--mine seems to have been broken and repaired with a couple of hose clamps. I'll try loosening those first and see what happens. Why is it that nothing on my house seems to be standard according to the information I find on The Internet?

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 04:20 PM

Sorry---that's RIDGE tool.

Rigid tools are another matter all together.

Mom I used up all the leftover vegetables and turkey and a bunch of spices in a big pot-au-feu soup. It has everything in it. But not the kitchen sink.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 05:03 PM

Huh? What? (blinking eyes sleepily and looking around in confusion)

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 06:24 PM

Put a shallow bucket under the trap, loosen the hose clamps and take the hose out and clean it out.

That will be your most probable source of blockage, right there.


Then replace hose and clamops, after cleaning and oiling the clamps, and tighten.

If you don't find the blockage there, have fun playing with the snake!


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 08:53 PM

We drove over to Gray's Lake NWR today to see the cranes and other birds.

There were snowy egrets, snowy owls, snow geese and snow drifts. Mostly snow drifts. Snow drifts higher than the car, drifts about 2 meters high. There was steam coming off the paved highway, which made a fog in which at times you quite literally could not tell snow-covered ground from sky. The snow was up to the at least the second wire from the top on the barbed wire fences, sometimes over the top wire.

Infinity is a straight fence, the dark tops of whose posts march off forever into the snow-sky.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 10:43 PM

I don't get it. The myrtles are blooming and the lilies are budding and sunlight is the order of eachmorning.

IS Rapaire in a time warp? It's Spring for cry-i!!


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Acme
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 10:44 PM

Sounds like the spot where the ransom money was cached in Fargo.

The snake didn't work. It wasn't long enough. Good thing it was cheap because I can't take it back. I paced the distance through the house over to where this might possibly have to reach, and I need at least 75 feet, not 25.

So what is the trick with the hose? How do you do that? I'd have to use a funky old hose because I'd have to toss it after such an operation.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 09:05 AM

May I humbly suggest Roto-Rooter or something similar?

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: MMario
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 09:12 AM

well - you could try to suggest it humbly, but we know you, Rapaire; and you will most likely take great pride in suggesting it.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 09:26 AM

No, no. It's just a humble suggestion from a humble person who lives in a humble house in a humble village in the humble high desert of humble Idaho, someone who eats naught but humble fare and faces life with humility.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Acme
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 10:15 AM

The plumber is a last resort. We had this problem before and the plumber used a snake to fix it. Gotta get a longer snake or think of something else.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 10:50 AM

Get some raw sodium. Put in inside a gelatin capsule about the size of a large marble and seal it in there. Roll the gelatin capsule down the drain. Add a wee bit of water. The capsule will reach the blockage. So will the water. The water will melt the gelatin. When the water reaches the raw sodium it will cause one hell of an explosion, and your blockage will definitely be cleared! ;-)

You may thank me by sending a check for whatever you think this advice is worth. I suggest $25, but feel free to go up to 3 figures.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 11:01 AM

Still,

So, you know the blockage is more than 20 feet down-line from kitchen sink.

Look for cleanout caps just outside the house on the line leading tot he city sewer. On later homes they are round black ABS plastic with square heads for wrenches to start unscrewing them. Older homes have cast iron ones.

This will let you access the line further down and snake back up -- if you can -- and down from there.

I've never used a hose for this purpose.

A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 11:33 AM

A garden hose wouldn't have the pressure to do the job, and you'd just get a backup of really awful stuff to clean up (personal experience). Now, if you are friendly with the fire department, THEY have hoses with the pressure necessary for the job....

I'm assuming you're on city sewer and not on a septic. If so, measure and see if the problem might be the city's and not yours. If you're on a septic just call the septic cleaner-outer people.

There might be, as Amos says, a cleanout further along (in the basement?). You might need only a few extra feet to reach the clog.

You could also float dynamite sticks down the drain pipe. I suggest electrical detonation if you use this option, as fuses might burn a bit too fast and you'd have to replace the wall of your house instead of just your lawn or driveway.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 01:04 PM

Oh, Rapaire. You and your explosives. Stilly, you might tap into the Mudcat bestiary and see if that giant hamster (COrrigidor? Corridus?) is still at play. You could send him down the line; he gets fed so much crap anyway he'd probably think it was a night out!
But renting a SeeSnake would get your answer faster. Me, I'd call a plumber, but chacun a son gout.

A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 01:11 PM

A spinner of beauty now rises to view....

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 01:12 PM

At twenty-two thousand, and nine-twenty-two!

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 01:12 PM

First, get a BIG carboy of sulfuric acid and a BIG carboy of hydrochloric acid. Dump 'em both down the drain. They'll either back up at the clog and eat through the pipe and give you a new underground septic hole OR they'll eat through the clog. In either case the problem is solved!

(If it's not solved you might possibly maybe perhaps want to mention the acids to the plumber....)

(See, Amos? Explosives aren't always the only answer to household problems.)

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 01:16 PM

Ach, Rapaire, always mit der forcink t'iks!! Burn, bang, shoot, stab, slice. Hydrochloric acid, mortars, sabers, Martinis, Winchesters...such a t'ing you got for der force.

Mit der pipes, better you should try persuasion and accuracy.



A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 01:25 PM

Okay.

How about if Alvin, Theodore or whats-his-name crawls down the pipe with a flashlight and a big spoon?

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: MMario
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 01:26 PM

Simon is too smart to do that, Alvin refuses and Theodore won't fit.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 01:47 PM

Besides, outsourcing the task would be bad policy when you have a local hamster who is only slightly more expensive right here in the Mudcat zoo. I think his cage is just down the row from Chinga's, the sister chimp of Chongo.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: MMario
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 01:51 PM

Corridus would probably get a new novel out of it, if he did it...


hmmmmm......

Corridus and the Texas Caverns of Doom

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 02:02 PM

Using dynamite would be crude, Rapaire. Overkill. I think that the raw sodium in the gelatin capsule is a much more sophisticated way of blowing open a blocked drain. Have you seen what happens when a chunk of pure sodium is dropped into water? It's quite spectacular.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 02:25 PM

Mebbe you could just drop some dry ice down the pipe and cap it.

A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 03:22 PM

Yes, and I prefer pure lithium or, in a pinch, potassium.

Perhaps...Gluon?

Come all you young fellers so young and so ripe
And seek not your fortune in the dark, dreary pipe
It will form as a habit and won't make you a hit
'Til the blood of your veins runs as black as the...poop.

Where it's dark as the dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the dangers are many and the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and there's always a gripe
It's dark as the dungeon way down in the pipe.

It's many a man I have seen in my day
Who lived just to labor his whole life away
Like a drunk with his whiskey or canteloupe ripe
A man must have lust for the lure of the pipe.

I hope when I'm gone and the ages do roar
My body will blacken and form into manure
Then I'll look down from the door of my Heavenly home
And pity the homekeeper a-snakin' my bones

The midnight, the morning, the breaking of day
Are the same to the snaker who labors away.
Where the demons of death often gives you a chit,
One slip of the snake and your hand's full of...stuff.

          -- "Slippery" Ed Serpens, Ballads Dark & Dismal
             (Conda, Idaho: Spouting Geyser Publications, 1918)

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Acme
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 03:23 PM

The layout of this house makes it easy to imagine what it looks like without the walls and doorways. Visualize a capital 'T'. The concrete pad has two bathrooms (both aligned with the right side of the top of the T) and a kitchen sink in addition to the laundry room (bottom of the T). The drain out to the sewer is at the front (left hand side of the top of the T). The plumber who did this last time pointed out that I'd planted a tree on top of the sewer line. I moved the tree that very week, because it was small enough I could still do it. Fingers crossed it isn't the tree roots.

I paced out the distance from my washer to the intersection with the bathroom pipes. And I've been thinking about how water flows.

The two bathrooms don't have a blockage problem. I run baths and my son does showers and the water drains fine at the normal rate of drainage.

The washer is about the same distance from the sewer connection outside as the nearest bathroom. The water doesn't stop completely, it doesn't drain fast enough. The washer pushes water down the drain, it doesn't gravity feed, and the slow drainage somewhere a number of feet away means it backs up in the pipes. This line shares the kitchen sink drain. I don't run food down it often and I use hot water and soap to break up any grease before it goes down the drain.

I think the line from the sewer access back into the house has potential as a portal, but it's second on my list to try, because the snake would have to make a right turn and it is more likely to keep going along the top of the T straight past that intersection and head for the bathrooms. Hmmmm. If I try that and it works, then I don't have to get a longer snake. So maybe it needs to go on the top of the list. Let me get my moon suit before I open that clean out.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 04:40 PM

Consider the difficulty you would have (and it happens!) if one of the vent pipes on the roof for the plumbing became plugged. It's cleaner work, but that's about all that can be said for it.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 05:41 PM

I like your idea for the Corridus novel, Mario! Very good.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 06:14 PM

I concur! Rapaires doggerel is also first rate.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 08:47 AM

EVERYTHING about Rapaire is first rate!

(This ad paid for by the Friends of Rapaire without recourse to public funds. Your donation would be appreciated.)

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 09:11 AM

I am not Rapaire, and I did not approve that message.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 09:15 AM

Everyone else approved it. Amos is a nonconforming individualist and must be punished until he conforms.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 10:36 AM

That right there is second rate.


Punishments will be continued until morale improves.



A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 11:48 AM

C'mon, Rapaire. Punish me, man!! Gimme yer best shot... I don't believe you HAVE any punishments. C'mon. Right here!! LEt's see what you....(^%^@#%098*&^%%^$328942390&(*^%&^$^#@#@#$@!@!@#!@#!@#@


z

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 11:49 AM

All punishments given by a first-rate person are first-rate punishments. Amos will be taken to Roy, Idaho and keelhauled.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 11:51 AM

See? See?



A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Acme
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 12:19 PM

What kind of keel exists in Roy, Idaho?

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 12:29 PM

That's the point. Roy is landlocked, and dragging Amos under a building there is what we here call "keelhauling."

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 12:33 PM

That's the point, indeed!! Rapaire is so inept at punishing, he can't even NAME his punishments correctly. He doesn't know the difference between keelhauling and cornerstone-ragging.



A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 03:13 PM

Rapaire wondering what acne is is kind of like a frog transforming from a little minnow in a pond and forgetting what water is like.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 03:22 PM

Frogs don't metamorph from minnows, frogs come from tadpoles.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 03:42 PM

GReenberg, iceberg, alla same ME!!!

But see what I mean? This kind of self-serving retrospective rationalization is not good for you.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Acme
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 03:47 PM

I thought he might be offering to slip you under the hull of one of those fancy expensive little kayaks that all of those rich folks in the Intermountain West strap to the top of their Land Rovers and Hummers (there is a spectrum of rich folks) and take to area lakes and rivers. It's a wild ride in the old trout stream tonight for Amos!

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Acme
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 04:51 PM

Mom, Mom! Are you okay? I couldn't log on for a minute. I thought you'd fallen and you couldn't get up!

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 05:19 PM

Me and my Hummer out duck huntin' last fall.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Acme
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 05:27 PM

Great minds think alike! I was just admiring a Hummer out front a moment ago.

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 05:38 PM

When keelhauled in Roy, Idaho, one experiences a frisson that is simply unforgettable!

It's better than a Latte Mas Grande with sprinkles and a twist of lime! (and all truly fervent Obama supporters know what THAT means...)

Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 05:47 PM

I'd go to Idaho for a hummer, with a lower case h. But only for the right person. Rapaire does NOT qualify. He's just whistllng Dixie, and barking up the wrong tree at the same time.

A