Come ’round, friends… for I have a story to tell. It begins with my lovely wife’s frustration at our newly acquired dishwasher. It seems that nothing we could do would affect the compentency of the dishwasher. Not the soap, the load size, the settings… so Tasha did what any man could not: consulted the manual.
Because we had no other recourse, she attempted to measure the temperature of the sink’s water with a meat thermometer. It would not even register on it, which lead Tasha to believe that this is the culprit to our no-so-clean dishes.
Fast forward to tonight, we are at my parents house. My Dad informs me that there’s a dial on the water heater to turn up the heat, (“dumbass”). So I figure this could be an easy fix. We get home tonight, and I watch a bit of TV and decide to go down there and be a domestic hero and fix matters.
I love my basement. It is decorated with the trappings of Middle Earth. Smiling at my kingdom, I head downstairs, round the bend, and head towoard my bar.
Squish. Squish. Oh shit.
From the door to my furnace and water heater I can see The River Anduin. Luckily, its only a 1/128 scale replica and was only 1/2 inch deep at the deepest. Swearing fluidly now, I find that my basement drain has somehow gotten plugged up with some muck. I called my Dad to have him bring his shop vac and then we spent about two hours pulling 40 some odd gallons of water out of my basement.
It is still pretty wet down there because the vacuum was only doing so much with the carpet. We turned on a few fans and the dehumidifier and set up a perimeter with some donated glasses from the bar to see if its actually drying up properly. I have to call Rotorooter tomorrow to see if they can snake my basement drain to ensure this does not happen again.
For those concerned… no props were harmed. The only thing that may persist is some grossness in the horrible 1960’s carpet, but that will remain to be seen.
The good news… I found the knob on the water heater and turned up the water temperature, so we should have some cleaner dishes if everything works properly.
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