Dateline: March 31: The morning after making the new drain connection, Paul said he had the most awful smell in his bedroom the previous night and it had nothing to do with our curry, well kind of! Paul’s shower tray is not finally fitted and the trap was dry, so the odours from the town sewer were gently wafting through his room, forcing him, even after pouring water down the shower trap to seal it, to sleep with all the windows open. Fortunately the nights are now warmer!
Following this incident, we were still concerned with occasional nasty whiffs outside and having previously failed to lift the manhole cover in the courtyard, we attacked it with renewed gusto, oh and a pick axe and several lump hammers of ascending size, and associated cold chisels.
Resistance was futile and despite the cover and frame having rusted together, the whole unit was finally lifted to reveal . . . a foot deep empty pit. What a let down. So far we had found not even a slightly sophisticated underground drainage fitting in any of the builder’s merchants we had visited and this discovery seemed even less remarkable. Closer inspection however and poking the rusty detritus around in the bottom of the pit, revealed an inset round plastic cover, a double sealed chamber in fact! Such sophistication!! This cover lifted easily enough and that’s when the full horror of an absence of maintenance for decades hit us . . . the smell and flies were disgusting. We were deep in the merde! (and where on earth did the flies come from? No, I don’t want to know, but have my suspicions)
There was only one thing for it and my brave comrade took a firm grasp of his shovel and with my stoutest pair of navvy gauntlets on, I held a pair of doubled up bin bags open to receive a foot thick of solid matter.
Why on earth an interceptor trap had been installed in a foul waste drain which discharges into a public sewer network is a mystery, but probably dates back to before the introduction of the town’s main drain network and was forgotten about. Not funny.
Anyway, a couple hours of flushing through with a hosepipe and newly cemented manhole cover in place and all is well and working much better then it probably has for many years.
I thought it best not to take any photos of this, our smelliest day, but these things are all part of a home renovator’s diary and as such, I though I would share it with you all.
I’m a sharing kind of person.
Night night everyone, sleep well and I wish you sweet (smelling) dreams.
LC
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