Bubbles of troubles

By Kevin Courtney

I was taking my evening shower when a most bizarre happening caught my eye through the glass stall wall.

Big bubbles were roiling the water in the toilet, erupting so fast and furious I feared they would top the bowl.

I experienced many levels of horror. Was a hatch of alligators about to emerge? A sewer rat? Was I going to flood out?

The threat subsided as quickly as it had begun. I didn’t know what I’d witnessed.

When I got out of the shower, the weirdness got weirder. My bathroom sink had lost normal water pressure. Cold and hot were coming out at half force.

I was dumbstruck. At this moment, in this bathroom, the natural order of the universe had suddenly collapsed.

I tried to come up with a theory as to how a toilet and a sink could both go suddenly wrong. Is there a plumber in the audience?

I marched Cheryl into the bathroom and described the frightening toilet bubbles. Then I turned on my sink. Your faucet is working just fine. Mine is all seized up.

I went to bed. When Cheryl joined me a half hour later, she whispered the news. The toilet had just overflowed. The mess was awful.

The bubbles, it seems, had returned when she tried to drain the tub after her bath. To thwart the bubbles, she had flushed. In retrospect, a bad move.

I lay awake thinking about the bubbles and the half-pressure faucet. Before drifting off, I concocted an explanation: we had an air pocket in the pipes.

I couldn’t quite say how this supposed air pocket worked, but having a theory was comforting.

When our alarm went off, Cheryl shared her own half-baked plan. She would plunger the toilet. Must be a blockage, she said.

How does that explain the bubbles? Cheryl didn’t know. And the low water pressure? She shrugged.

I was the first one into the bathroom. When I flushed, the toilet came within a hair’s breadth of overflowing again.

Simultaneously, Cheryl ran water in the kitchen sink. More toilet bubbles.

Mayday, I yelled. Flush nothing. Leave the faucets off.

I can’t swear to it, I said, but I think we have a total system backup. The house is a ticking sewer bomb.

Although I’d declared all sinks, showers and toilets off limits, I cheated and ran enough water (at half pressure) to wash my face. How else could I go to work?

On the way out to my car, I had an inspiration. Which of our plumbing fixtures was at the lowest elevation? Probably the toilet and shower in the garage.

I cautiously opened the garage bathroom door. One whiff said it all. The shower stall had become a sewage pond.

When I told Cheryl, she decided to flee the house with me. We went to Peet’s to regroup.

I proposed a survival strategy. We could use a garden hose for a day or two to wash ourselves outdoors. We’ll reserve major bathroom pit stops for when we’re at work. In a pinch, we can prevail upon a neighbor.

Cheryl came up with a better strategy. Call every plumber in the Yellow Pages, she said.

Plumber man arrived after lunch. He took all of one minute to assess the problem. When he snaked the main line, sewage gurgled away.

And the half-pressure faucet? He unscrewed the aerator screen and removed grit.

A coincidental, but unrelated problem. Like the confounding medical conditions on “House.”

I cleaned the shower and sweetened everything before Cheryl got home.

We love our house again.

Kevin can be reached at 256-2217 or Napa Valley Register,  P.O. Box 150, Napa 94559 or kcourtney@napanews.com

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