Flooding

As if on cue, the pipes several floors up have exploded once again. My girlfriend's apartment was waterlogged this morning, so she came down and cooked breakfast on my stove. She moves out next week.

Plumbing Redux

Today has not been a good plumbing day. I've narrowly averted disastrous overflows several times using either the bucket or garbage disposal method; there's no point in calling the maintenance guy, because it would just take him away from fixing the actual problem, and he'd just do the same thing I'd do anyway. I consider it my small sacrifice to help out.

I was not so lucky a few minutes ago, and I ended up with probably a gallon or so of stinky sludge water on pretty much everything in the kitchen. I've got it mostly mopped up and taken care of for the moment, but I'm pretty sick of it. So, being the MacGyver that I am, I have a temporary workaround.

I put the plug in the drain, stuck a tin can on top of it, and put a weight-lifting weight on top of it. The hole diameter is about 3 inches, and the weight is about 12.5 pounds, making for about 1.8 psi rejection, or about four feet of water column. This isn't a huge amount, but it should stop incidental seepage and should at least limit the impact when a surge hits.

I really hope this shit gets fixed soon.

Plumbing

Maintenance spent the majority of the afternoon trying to snake out the plumbing that leads to my kitchen sink drain. Apparently things are pretty bad; it really has been all afternoon, and they only started making progress a few minutes ago. For a while, I was concerned that it might overflow the boundaries of the sink; I had the trash can ready to start bailing to the bathroom if necessary.

On the downside, my sink is full of sludge that really does not smell very good.

On the plus side, this will hopefully clear up the weirdness with the sink occasionally gurgling itself full of foam for no apparent obvious good reason.