Tad's Life

The toilet in the main bathroom has been making funny noises lately when you flush it. Way to many gurgling sounds and echoes from the two sinks on that sewer line. Sometimes it almost overflowed. Other times it was just fine. A mystery.

A couple weeks ago I had Jean Gomis look at it. We opened up the concrete box outside and looked for roots clogging the exit. There were none. I went in a flushed and it worked just fine.

But things have been getting worse, so today I mentioned it to him and asked if he could take a little time at the end of the day. He came up this afternoon and proceeded to remove the toilet itself. There they were: roots.

But not just a few. What you see here is what was in the four-inch line. Peeking in the top of that PVC pipe at the top of the photo, all you could see was a ring of roots sneaking in the joint between the PVC and the old ferro-cement sewage line. Jean got a machete and slice it loose and then spent 20 minutes tugging and yanking. The thing finally pulled out and around the bend in the pipe. It was three feet long and almost filled the diameter of the pipe.

I called in Antoinette as a witness. We saved the root in a bucket for Jane to see when she got home.