Oh the joys of living in student apartments!!!
So last Thursday morning I got up, and having slept for maybe 6 hours, I was rather out of it. I went into the bathroom to get ready for the day... you know, the usual stuff. So I flushed the toilet and walked over and started washing my hands. As I did so, I realized something about the toilet flushing didn't quite sound right. As I reached for the toilet lid to check that the toilet was flushing properly, I heard a trickling sound. (You may ask why I only mention hearing this.... I had not quite gotten around to putting my contacts in, but because it was next on my list, I didn't have my glasses on and therefore... I was mostly blind.) mmmmk... that is a bad sound. I, being not completely ignorant of how the toilet works, hurried and lifted the floater thing in the tank (yes, I'm quite sure that is the proper terminology) so that it would stop sending water into the flood zone. I stood there holding the floater thing with one hand and the toilet lid with the other (because it didn't seem to want to stay up), while squinting really hard at the toilet. I wish I had a picture of it to post; I'm sure it would be a good one. When the flooding stopped after a short time, I decided to wait and see if things would clear themselves up and go through as they sometimes do, especially because I hadn't given the toilet any reason to not flush. After a long time of standing there squinting, trying to figure out if the water level was going down at all, I concluded that it was not, and the only way to fix this would be to plunge, even though it was going to make a bigger mess. I skillfully got the toilet lid to stay up as I reached for the plunger. It took probably 5 minutes of plunging before the water level started to go down..... slowly. I could hear that the water was draining a bit, but it was still too full. I tried letting the floater down and was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't filling the bowl up, only the tank. yay for having both hands again. At this pointed I realized I hadn't pulled the rug far enough away when the flooding started, so I pulled the shower curtain back to throw the rug in the tub and rinse it off. Well.... that would have been a good idea if there had not been 3 inches of colorful water in the tub... random chunks of who knows what floating around.
Sick
So I realized it was no fault of my own that the toilet flowed over onto the floor. I reluctantly woke up my roomie, Jessica, and said "good morning... we have a problem." What a lovely way to wake up your best friend right? Well I only had like 15 minutes before I had to leave for my entrepreneurship class... so I was still trying to get ready for the day as much as I could. The thing is.... after putting in my contacts I could see that since the girls upstairs had gotten up and started showering, our shower was filling up more and more. A bit panicked, I ran down to the manager's apartment and knocked.... and knocked.... and rang the doorbell. Well isn't that just awesome?! I wrote on the maintenance request sheet that the sewer was backed up into our bathroom and surrounded it with stars, wrote down the phone numbers for the managers, and ran back the my apt. Jessica was up and ready to help out at this point so I had her call the managers. So I only had a few minutes before my friend Jacob would be knocking on my door to walk to our class, so I popped some bread in the toaster while Jessica talked to the general manager. When she got off the phone she said "so the general manager said, 'oh, we've had that problem in that apartment before... but we paid someone to fix it.' obviously they didn't do a very good job!!!" OK.... yeah that makes me feel really good about the quirks my apartment has that no one told me about! Well, they said they were sending a plumber, so I apologized and ran out the door to go to class. Don't worry, I told Jacob why I was so cute and rushed and he couldn't stop laughing.
When I got home from class the mess was mostly cleaned up and they were just working on getting the sewer down and out. They brought in a hose and started shoving it down the wall. One of them said something about making sure to do something so it would spray all over the walls..... hmmm that is comforting. I turned to Jessica and said "what?! dear.... your bed is on the other side of that wall!" I received a very enthusiastic "Thanks!!! I hadn't thought of that!" in return. :)
So after the got the hose in far enough, they sent pressurized water gushing through the system to loosen things up and get them far away. Then they ran all the faucets, and toilets they could to make sure the problem was cleared up.... I hope the water bill is just a flat rate they split up between the whole complex of this is going to be a fun bill to get.
Jessica and I then cleaned our bathroom with fervor. I sprayed on the scrubbing bubbles probably 3 times to make me feel better about the sanitation of our tub. I still have to try not to think about it though!
So last Thursday morning I got up, and having slept for maybe 6 hours, I was rather out of it. I went into the bathroom to get ready for the day... you know, the usual stuff. So I flushed the toilet and walked over and started washing my hands. As I did so, I realized something about the toilet flushing didn't quite sound right. As I reached for the toilet lid to check that the toilet was flushing properly, I heard a trickling sound. (You may ask why I only mention hearing this.... I had not quite gotten around to putting my contacts in, but because it was next on my list, I didn't have my glasses on and therefore... I was mostly blind.) mmmmk... that is a bad sound. I, being not completely ignorant of how the toilet works, hurried and lifted the floater thing in the tank (yes, I'm quite sure that is the proper terminology) so that it would stop sending water into the flood zone. I stood there holding the floater thing with one hand and the toilet lid with the other (because it didn't seem to want to stay up), while squinting really hard at the toilet. I wish I had a picture of it to post; I'm sure it would be a good one. When the flooding stopped after a short time, I decided to wait and see if things would clear themselves up and go through as they sometimes do, especially because I hadn't given the toilet any reason to not flush. After a long time of standing there squinting, trying to figure out if the water level was going down at all, I concluded that it was not, and the only way to fix this would be to plunge, even though it was going to make a bigger mess. I skillfully got the toilet lid to stay up as I reached for the plunger. It took probably 5 minutes of plunging before the water level started to go down..... slowly. I could hear that the water was draining a bit, but it was still too full. I tried letting the floater down and was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't filling the bowl up, only the tank. yay for having both hands again. At this pointed I realized I hadn't pulled the rug far enough away when the flooding started, so I pulled the shower curtain back to throw the rug in the tub and rinse it off. Well.... that would have been a good idea if there had not been 3 inches of colorful water in the tub... random chunks of who knows what floating around.
Sick
So I realized it was no fault of my own that the toilet flowed over onto the floor. I reluctantly woke up my roomie, Jessica, and said "good morning... we have a problem." What a lovely way to wake up your best friend right? Well I only had like 15 minutes before I had to leave for my entrepreneurship class... so I was still trying to get ready for the day as much as I could. The thing is.... after putting in my contacts I could see that since the girls upstairs had gotten up and started showering, our shower was filling up more and more. A bit panicked, I ran down to the manager's apartment and knocked.... and knocked.... and rang the doorbell. Well isn't that just awesome?! I wrote on the maintenance request sheet that the sewer was backed up into our bathroom and surrounded it with stars, wrote down the phone numbers for the managers, and ran back the my apt. Jessica was up and ready to help out at this point so I had her call the managers. So I only had a few minutes before my friend Jacob would be knocking on my door to walk to our class, so I popped some bread in the toaster while Jessica talked to the general manager. When she got off the phone she said "so the general manager said, 'oh, we've had that problem in that apartment before... but we paid someone to fix it.' obviously they didn't do a very good job!!!" OK.... yeah that makes me feel really good about the quirks my apartment has that no one told me about! Well, they said they were sending a plumber, so I apologized and ran out the door to go to class. Don't worry, I told Jacob why I was so cute and rushed and he couldn't stop laughing.
When I got home from class the mess was mostly cleaned up and they were just working on getting the sewer down and out. They brought in a hose and started shoving it down the wall. One of them said something about making sure to do something so it would spray all over the walls..... hmmm that is comforting. I turned to Jessica and said "what?! dear.... your bed is on the other side of that wall!" I received a very enthusiastic "Thanks!!! I hadn't thought of that!" in return. :)
So after the got the hose in far enough, they sent pressurized water gushing through the system to loosen things up and get them far away. Then they ran all the faucets, and toilets they could to make sure the problem was cleared up.... I hope the water bill is just a flat rate they split up between the whole complex of this is going to be a fun bill to get.
Jessica and I then cleaned our bathroom with fervor. I sprayed on the scrubbing bubbles probably 3 times to make me feel better about the sanitation of our tub. I still have to try not to think about it though!
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