Poop Hits the Fan

DISCLAIMER. This is nasty. =) 

Poop hit the fan... Actually it was more like poop hit the ceiling, walls, floors, and all body parts in it's crossfire. 

It was a beautiful Thursday evening. I was carrying shopping bags in the house that were filled with dresses to try on for my cousin's wedding and gifts for my birthday girl. Ari and I were exhausted, but happy with all we had accomplished. Clay and I were still unloading all of our little treasures we had found earlier that day when I heard it.... an odd noise. That started slow...... I asked Clay what the world was making that noise and then it dawned on us. The noise was coming from our half bath.... that had NOTHING in it..... NOTHING to  be making noise anyway. We had the toilet and sink out because we had been remodeling it. We had just installed new floors in the bathroom and the adjoining office and Clay has just finished up my beautiful baseboards. So it was empty. There was nothing in the room that should be making any sort of sound. We rush and open the door and that's when our mouths dropped and our hands flew up to our noses. There was poo coming out of the hole in the wall.... and I do not mean coming out... I mean COMING OUT. Like a fireman's hose. You know the pressure coming out of the fireman's house when fighting a fire... that was the speed and pressure that the raw sewage was flying out of my wall. I have never been so shocked in my life. Oh, the panic. You never imagine that you will find POO coming out of a WALL in your HOUSE ever. Sure... a shower or over flowing loo, but honestly.... a WALL. So, we scream in under chaos and try to figure out what in the good green world we are supposed to do. We get a bucket, but by the time I get back the damage had been done and we are standing in our own.... poo. Nasty doesn't even begin to describe it. It had flowed out of the bathroom into our office... INCHES of it, but it had STOPPED coming out like a crazy train.... 

My outfit for the ordeal.... I couldn't handle the smell and didn't have a mask! 

My poor baseboards.

 So, still in under disbelief, we begin cleaning up. EVERY TOWEL IN THE WHOLE HOUSE is being used in the disastrous clean up. The mess is somewhat cleaned when Clay notices that there is still some. hmm... umm.. mess coming out of the sink hole. So, he begins to clean it out. WRONG move.... that started the entire "poop shooting out like a fireman's hose" episode again, except this time the pressure is even more extreme. Clay bends down and covers the end of the hole with his hands and puts all his body weight into it... and it is still coming out. He is a strong boy and there was no way he could keep it from coming out. So, I do what any good wife does... CALL HIS DAD and FREAK out and tell him that it is VERY important that he gets to my house ASAP, because our house is exploding poo. So, he says he coming and I reassure Clay that his dad is coming and most of the time he knows how to fix any house problem, but Clay is completely in the zone and not hearing a word I say. He has been holding the hole for about 10 minutes or so now. His hand is blue and he is shaking and in some other "zone" I have never seen him go before. All I can think of is that he would be amazing in one of those Survivor challenges where you have to outlast your opponents in some mind over matter competition. Anyway.... I can tell Clay is starting to give our and I have no idea how much longer he can keep the pressure on the hole. I get a big blanket and stand up behind him with that blanket shielding the door opening and the rest of the room. I am holding the blanket up as high as I can reach and stepping on the corners so my legs are kinda sprawled from one side of the room to the other. I knew if he let go the pressure would be so high that it would go EVERYWHERE. Clay is still holding it when his dad arrives and I can tell that Justin has an idea. He goes in our garage and rummages around for a tool. He is headed to the back yard where our septic tank is. He thinks if he can get the septic cap off it will relieve the pressure and start going outside instead of in the house. Good idea, right? WRONG when he gets the septic cap off it does cause a change in pressure, but from the COMMODE hole right behind me where I am all sprawled out protecting. The commode hole blew up like Ol' Faithful. I was standing basically over it, so that means that it basically blew my shorts off...... Talking about something sneaking up behind you. Fhewwwww..... When the pressure changed it was so strong that is started trying to suck Clay's hand inside the hole. Clay's dad said that when he finally got the septic cap off he was expecting a major explosion to come out of the hole outside.... and NOTHING happened. Then he heard screaming from inside the house and new something must have happened. He came running in the house and found us both completely covered in... yep.... anything and everything that had ever gone down the upstarts toilet. When Ol' Faithful occurred Clay was just speechless and had no idea what to do and he had a hurt shoulder and hand from holding the poop hole. I scream for him to go get the shop vac, because I am now in the floor protecting the carpet from getting wet. I have a blanket swoooshing the water away from the carpet. Clay runs to the garage and he and his dad grab the shop vac. Bring it inside and his dad plugs it in. We are ready to suck up the mess..... we turn it on and POOF soot goes EVERYWHERE. We had cleaned out the fire place with it. He thought to take off the filter, but apparently there was still some stuck in the main vent. So, now on top of inches of poop covering every inch of my office, laundry room, and bathroom we have nasty oily black soot... Yep, when we do things we don't just go half way. We have to really go for it full force. We begin the cleaning process again and this time it is already past midnight. We are out of towels so we use every roll of paper towels from my big SAMs Club purchase and suck the rest up in the shop vac. Once we clean up the mess we notice that every time we walk across the room, water would keep coming up out of the floors.... Our new floors. The water/poo mixture had made it's way down into the cracks and down under the flooring. So, around 1:00 a.m. we start ripping up our brand new flooring. We finished the job and then head over to the in-laws for showers and a few hours of sleep. 

Ol' Faithful

Half of the nasty towels

The plumber comes the next day and does his plumbing thing and says he has us all fixed up. So, we move back in to the wreckage and begin to thoroughly bleach and bleach and disinfect  and air out the area. Walls, baseboards, floors, everything had to be disinfected.... I finally finish and go pick up my kiddos and come back home ready to crash. We have a peaceful nights sleep in our own beds. Our house in utter chaos, but at least it is disinfected and the plumbing works again. We get up the next morning and begin ripping up the remaining floors and cleaning up the rest of the mess. Anika goes to take a shower and I am cooking lunch when we hear it.... that horrid awful poop shooting out of the wall sound. It HAPPENED again. It wasn't near as bad, but again we had poo covering the floors and walls and apparently the problem was not solved. So, beyond frustrated we clean and clean and clean and disinfect again... it is a Saturday so we don't dare all the plumber, because if we have to pay weekend plumbing fee we will be bankrupt before we know it. So, we pack up again and spend the rest of the weekend with the in-laws. Monday morning the plumber is back at it. He says he thinks the plumber is fixed for good. We move back in and still now... 2 weeks later we are still gun shy. Every time the commode flushes or someone takes a shower we are scared to death we will have another explosion, but we have been good so far.

This is just the water from the second explosion.. imagine POOP everywhere there is water! 

This is our story about when "the poop hit the fan". I hope and pray we put that book back on the shelf and we never have to read it again. 

You may all go wash your hands now. =) 

-Holly