Old Houses
I should have known, after buying and living in our old house on Meadowlands in Ottawa, not to buy another old house. And yet, here we are.
We’ve been in the house 5 days now, and the sink just backed up in the basement, dumping quite a bit of water on the floor. Here’s what I think happened.
The drain is clogged. Water run in the laundry tub in the basement drains fine for a few seconds, and then very slowly – which to me says there’s a blockage not that far into the pipe.
We have a water softener. I’ve been learning about water softeners, and they’re interesting things. You give them salt and they give you softer water. Part of the process of softening water is charging some “beads” in a tank, and these beads need to be recharged nightly, which means running water into a separate container holding salt crystals, bringing that water into the filter tank, and then draining that water. Draining that water means dropping about 90 liters of water down the drain.
And when the drain is plugged? It means dropping about 90 liters of water on the floor.
So I’ve been using a wet-dry vac to suck water out of the carpet while some relatives dropped by to try to unclog the drain with a snake. They had no luck, so I called a plumber. He tried as well, and also failed.
So tomorrow they’re coming back to “flush” the drain. I sure hope this works, because 5 days into owning this house I’d really hate to be spending even more than this is already going to cost.