Pipe Dreams

There is nothing quite as terrifying as first-time home ownership.   

In California, where we bought our first house, there is little pomp and circumstance associated with the purchase of real estate.  The buyers and sellers do not sit down together to mark the occasion as a life event.  Word came by phone from one of the many brokers—a faceless foot soldier in a veritable army of transaction mercenaries—that we had taken ownership of the property.  It was a small Victorian home, vintage 1880, barely 900 square feet, which we had been renting for four years.   We spent many a comfortable night in this charming house until the switch was thrown and we became the owners.  With that, we would never sleep deeply again; we tossed and turned with the fear that something was about to happen.

And it did.  For one thing, I became pregnant in a matter of weeks with our first child.  This meant that our little apartment and the small basement flat beneath—a potential source of rental income—would need to be surgically connected into a single-family dwelling.  Becoming a matter of urgency, we had a finite number of months to figure out how to engage in, and complete, our first major construction project.

We found a deck builder who was reputed to be an expert on stairs.  He assured us that cutting a hole in the floor to drop a stairway would be a simple matter.  But after enduring three inspector-ordered reconfigurations of the stairs, we were months behind.  By the time he was finished, we had just eight weeks to paint, recover the floors, turn the small downstairs kitchen into a laundry room and assemble the crib.

That’s when the sewage started backing up into the bathtub.  I am not kidding.  This was raw, stinky, germ-ridden, 100% American-made, landfill bound material that lost its way, choosing to swim upstream to take comfort of our home rather than endure the arduous journey through the sewer pipes.   Baffled, we called Roto-Rooter.  They dispatched a rather jovial gentleman in the middle of the night to snake the drain and clear whatever blockage had allegedly caused this backup.  This bought us some relief—temporarily—in which we were convinced we had dodged a bullet.  Not so fast!  After nearly two weeks, the problem occurred again.  Then again.  And again.  Each time, the interval between events got closer until it became clear this was not an average drain obstruction.

 The Roto-Rooter guy suggested that we take a different approach.  He could run a diagnostic procedure—something akin, ironically, to a colonoscopy, and priced to match.  He could pass an infrared camera through the drain system to look for damage.  Noting that the definition of insanity is repeatedly snaking your drain and expecting different results, we agreed.  They confirmed what we were beginning to suspect, that the drain pipe was broken.  Unfortunately, the breakage was located about eight inches beyond the footprint of our house.  Had it been “within the walls” it would have been covered by our insurance.  Their estimate for repair: $5000.

With a new baby soon to arrive and the finishing work of the renovations still underway, this was devastating.  I began calling for other estimates, but the best we were able to do was $3800 from a sketchy source.  Finally, our former landlord suggested that we call a plumber with whom he had done significant work on his other properties.  The guy arrived in the biggest, newest, fanciest Mercedes Benz I had ever seen, sporting a solid gold Rolex watch.  I doubted that this was the solution to our problems, yet I batted my eyelashes and rubbed my swollen abdomen to its greatest effect. 

He looked at me sympathetically, urging me to sit while he explained what needed to be done.  “You don’t want to pay a plumber to dig a hole,” he said. “So this is what I want you to do.”  He explained that my husband should drive to a particular corner in the Mission District on Saturday morning.  There, all the ‘illegals’ line up hoping to get day jobs.  He said to look at their hands, choosing 3 young workers with heavy callouses.  “Those boys,” he explained, “have experience digging holes.”  We were to pay them $5 per hour each—not one penny more.  “Have them dig until you can see the pipe,” he said, “exposing about 4-6 feet.  Then call me.”

Sure enough, when the pipe was revealed, it was crushed.   I called the plumber who, not surprisingly, did none of the work himself.  He had a few young guys get in the hole and repair the broken segment of sewer pipe.  A few days later I received a bill for $159 with a note that said, “Deduct 10% if it’s a boy.”

It was.

Tomorrow's blog:  Shattered Dreams