Drain-o

I spent Thursday morning doing what's become an annual chore: cleaning the drains. All the "gray" waste water from our house drains down into a settling reservoir in the utility room where it then exits the house into the sewer system. You may recall that the sewer line in our neighborhood is pretty new, having been put in in 2006. Before that, our gray water drained into the vineyard and eventually to the river. Yuck.

Curly vine tendrils making their way around a leaf.

The concrete pipes that run through the slab our house sits on can accumulate gunk and deposits from our relatively hard water and blockages form slowly. So, once a year, I snake them out to keep them running. We had recently noticed a smell in the utility room and when I removed the cover of one of the access points, sure enough, there was yucky water accumulating.

I got the power washer out along with the drain-snake attachment and went to work clearing the blockage and cleaning the drain system. Now it's running normally again. By the way, human waste does not go through this system; the toilet has a pipe that runs directly into the sewer line separately. I don't have to mess with that.