The Sewer Scope

Last night, I got home from ultimate practice and went to have a shower. After a minute or two in the shower, I started to notice the water building up in the floor of my stall - not a normal occurrence, that's for sure. I quickly finished rinsing and dried off, before heading upstairs to consult with the neighbours on our apparent sewage problems. Travis and Allie were already aware of the issue, since they had noticed that our laundry room had a bunch of standing water around the drain. The water seemed to be draining slowly, but Travis called our land lady and got the number for the city plumbers right away. The plumbers couldn't come until this morning, when they arrived around 8:30am.

I was glad they showed up, since I couldn't really use my water until they cleared the drains. So, this morning when they started working in the laundry room, I went to check out what they were doing and to find out when I could use the water to shower before school. That's when I got to see them using "The Sewer Scope"! Sounds exciting, no? Here it is! Well, sort of. This is what the Sewer Scope looks like if you Google Image it, but the one the plumbers used a slightly different one. Anyway, although plumbing is likely a gross job overall, the Sewer Scope was actually pretty cool. We were able to see images like this:It's a little small since I pulled it off the internet, but it's a picture of the inside of a pipe with water running on the bottom, although the view is tilted to the side. While working to clear our plug, we were able to see the main problem our drains got plugged - ROOTS! That's right, there were roots ALL over in our pipes. So, stuff (ew) going through the drains would get caught up really easily and cause blockages. See some roots:
Ours weren't as bad as this second picture. The next thing the plumbers did was use an auger to clear away all those nasty roots. I didn't see this part, since I was starting to get ready for school (eat breakfast, make lunch, yadi yah) but I certainly heard the crazy noises coming from their work. By 9:15, they were basically finished and I was allowed to use the water again, which I did with relish. The plumbers departing, leaving only a messy hallway for me to remember them by (honestly, why do these guys wear their shoes inside?!).