Yuck

I told you about the drains. I had to clean them out. We have two regards in the utility room floor, which I suppose are called "access points" in English. They are large concrete basins between the pipe sections where the drain water slows down and drops sediments.

Callie thought the smell was interesting.

So they have to be cleaned out periodically and while it's a yucky job, it's pretty easy to do. However, over the years, the pipes themselves accumulate gunk between the regards. So how does one clean them out? Manually, of course, with a pipe snake.

This is one of the regards with the cover removed. Callie is enjoying the smell.

We invested in a power washer and an attachment that snakes out drains. I used the attachment to clean out our pipes. Unfortunately, I needed to alternate between the manual snake and the power washer snake. Neither one could clear the blockages alone, but alternating them seemed to work out. So that's what I did.

The other regard. The main pipes are on the bottom; the plastic pipes you see come from the utility sink and the downstairs shower.

It took me several hours of working the manual snake through the concrete pipes and then doing the same with the power washer snake to actually dislodge the stone-like build-up inside them. But it eventually broke up and came out. Now the drains are flowing well.

This is the calcium gunk that came out of one section of pipe. Yuck.

I think that there were decades worth of build-up in those drains. I'm happy now that they're flowing more freely. I think the power washer just paid for itself.

The Kärcher power washer.