F*** Gillece

I didn't mean to let it be so quiet around here these past couple of weeks.  Things have certainly been happening, but have been totally overshadowed by rage-inciting nonsense, and I though it best to let the cortisol levels wane before attempting to write a post, lest it end up being rather more colorful than my dear readers' ears (eyes?) are accustomed to.

That said, let me present a quote....

And now the back story...

A couple of weeks ago one of the floor drains in the basement backed up, flooding one room of our basement.  Annoying, but not really a big deal.  We had thought it was from the bad pressure valve on the boiler draining and clogging the floor drain with crap from the basement floor.  Once we realized that wasn't the case we figured it was that combined with the food scraps from the newly added garbage disposal (the first the house has ever had) overwhelming the ancient, and likely grease filled, drain.  No big deal right?

When a bit of Draino and our pipe snake failed, we called Gillece, a local plumbing company that offers a same day drain cleaning special of $100.  The first guy came out, tried snaking the drain only through one of the floor drains, hit the tee a couple of feet in, pulled the snake out with black goo on it, and claimed the pipe was broken because he could not get the snake in any further.  He said a supervisor would come out with a camera later that day, then backed into our neighbor's tree on the way out, leaving some tail light embedded in it (and nary an acknowledgement or apology).

The supervisor then came out, this time running the camera through one floor drain, hit the tee, and then tried the vent, this time making it to the clog and showing us a black screen as proof there was a broken pipe, then pulling out the camera and showing the black goo on it that he thought was further proof.  When we pointed out that the line was only getting as far as the tee he said that "lines weren't run that way."  When we asked him to run the camera backwards from the next floor drain down the line he refused, saying there was no point, since it wouldn't show anything since the pipes were broken.  In addition to a lot of old house nonsense he spouted (we're neither ignorant nor naive around here if you haven't noticed), he made a point of questioning why we'd even bother fixing up an old house, and talked about how the pipes should have failed a long time ago - because "cast iron and terracotta only last a few decades."  Now while I'm the first to acknowledge our 1886 pipes are a bit of a ticking time bomb, the idea that they would only last 20 years is laughable!  Not only that, but our basement floor is nicely poured (older) concrete, with all of the drain lines neatly traced in the floor - either due to past work or VERY clever workers in the past who wanted to make future work as straightforward as possible.

One written quote later, we were both infuriated and terrified that there was actually something wrong (panic mode is debilitating for me).  That night I had the presence of mind to look up professional pipe snake rentals, and discovered two things.  First off, the black goo was good, a sign of a clog - broken pipes would have left brown mud on the snake and camera.  Secondly, snakes aren't a good choice for old pipes - instead you should use a sewer jet (in our case an Electric Eel lol), which is basically a pressure washer for your pipes, they're much more gentle on the old terracotta and brittle cast iron.  Our local Sunbelt Rentals rented them for $49 dollars, so that's where we headed the next morning.  Picked it up, brought it home, screwed it onto our hose and plugged it in, and 30 seconds later.... CLEAN FUCKING PIPE!!!!!!!

While we're both obviously overjoyed in our victory, the Angry Monkey is beyond furious, and already has a complaint in with the Better Business Bureau.  The first response from Gillece about the complaint?  That they're happy we found an unconventional way of fixing the pipe.  Unconventional?  Gillece offers pipe jetting!  Not to mention they didn't say it was a clog they couldn't fix, they said our pipes had collapsed and that it would cost over $8000 to fix if we paid cash (and over $9000 if we didn't), while pressing us to rip out all of the sewer lines to replace our "failing" pipes all at once...

and lets just laugh at their code of ethics for a bit eh?

So that was our week, and I didn't even mention the concussion (it was the cat's fault, I swear, at least for the first head bashing incident - I'll take the blame for the second)...