Mucky Stuff
“The joys of homeownership!” said my wife. She wasn’t smiling. Our septic tank had backed up, pumping sewage into the house. Not pretty. But pretty expensive.
I wasn’t pretty when I walked into the house, stood in the living room, and waited for my wife to turn her attention toward me.
“Oh my God!” she said. “What happened?” She was smiling this time. Then she was laughing.
Covering her mouth, she looked me up and down. I was covered head to toe in wet multi-colored mucky stuff. Especially my face and hair. My left eye was closed, overwhelmed with the sticky mucky stuff. “What did you do?”
The day before my mucky incident, our bathtub had filled with backed-up sewage. The sewage had filled the toilet bowl from the bottom up like a rising fountain and boiled over onto the floor.
The next day, the plumber came out and snaked the drain lines. My wife called me at work.
“He says the lines won’t drain because the septic tank is full and needs to be pumped.” The plumber came on the phone. “I can get the pump truck out here in a couple of days. We better wait till the heavy rains stop.”
My wife told me later that the plumber says his company’s protocol is to check the water heater every time they come to check a septic tank. I guess they figure if you’re dumb enough to not maintain your septic tank, you probably don’t maintain your water heater, either. The plumber had unscrewed the front cover of the water heater closet attached to the outside of the house, and declared the insulation and fittings adequate, but suggested we might want to drain the tank to remove any gathered sediment. He could do the job when he came back.
The following morning, I went to drain that water heater myself. Simple job. When I turned the handle on the spigot at the bottom of the tank, a slight dribble of rusty-colored water came out. Hmm, not draining the gallonage expected. I turned the handle some more. The handle came off in my hand. Uh-oh. Plumbing parts have a way of self-destructing when I’m involved.
I noticed on the face of the tank a printed 1-877 phone number to call for questions. Two rings and a twangy energetic voice says, “Hi! This is Jeff.
How can I help yuu?” Jeff has a distinct Southern accent. When I told him of my plight, he said, “Don’t you worry about that handle, sir, it will thread right back onto the spigot. But rust and sediment are plugging up your tank. Try twisting off that spigot. Then you might have to get yourself a piece of war (that’s “wire” to you Northerners) to poke inside and loosen up that sediment to start your flow out of that tank. I’m here for you, sir. Call me right back if you need to.”
The spigot wouldn’t budge. It’s a plastic spigot and my involvement with it told me it would soon self-destruct. So, I took me a piece of tie war, poked it through the opening on top of the spigot where the handle came off, and bent it so it pushed inside the tank. It worked. Boy, howdy, it worked. That’s when the multi-colored mucky stuff exploded through the top of that spigot, straight into my face, and showered me head to toe. Hence my walk into the living room to give my wife a show. No, I never did get covered in sewage mucky stuff, if that’s what you were thinking. Ha!
I called Jeff back and thanked him for the tip about the war, and my misuse of it. “I’m so sorry, sir, I’m happy you’re okay. But if youda got that spigot off like told ya, all that sediment woulda shot down instead of up!” I asked Jeff if he was located in the South. “Yes, sir,” he said, “Johnson City, Tennessee!”
When I play the song “Wagon Wheel” with my band, and we come to the line where we stop the music and we all holler, “Johnson City, Tennessee!” I will from now on see that shower of multicolored mucky stuff racing toward my face.
By the way, because of the lack of septic tank maintenance, a simple pumping of the tank every ten years or so, we may now need new leach lines to the tune of many dollars.
Note to homeowners, as part of the joys of homeownership, keep up with your septic and sewer maintenance. And drain your water heater every so often. But let the plumber do it.
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