Living in old houses comes with advantages and disadvantages. I could list advantages all day (claw foot tubs, high floor boards, built in telephone shelves, doors with skeleton key holes, etc) but in turn, I could also list disadvantages all day (hot spots in the summer, cold spots in the winter, cracked windows, scary electrical outlets, scary basement furnaces, etc).My washing machine was replaced last week as the old one was doing some crazy things. However, with the replacement came a fountain of water every time the thing would drain. Water would spew out all over as the drain wasn't draining. It was fun for a few loads, but the charm quickly wore off.
A call to my landlord ended with me being quite upset. A clogged drain was apparently my fault and it would be up to me to call a plumber to come fix it. I'm pretty sure that I had only been washing clothes (mostly cotton) since moving here and unless the cat was taking a bath in the washing machine, I couldn't figure out why my drain was all of a sudden clogged. I am also not sure why the landlord didn't want to take a look at it since it started immediately after having a new machine installed. Many, many things confuse me about the landlords in Arkansas, I'll add this to my list.
I'll be darned if I have to pay a plumber to show me his backside while bending over to fix the drain, so I decided to add plumber to the list of things I dabble in for fun and I headed to the basement with a flashlight and untwisted wire hanger. After digging around in the drain for about 10 minutes, I had pulled out a good pile of rusted metal shards and bits of sandy clumps. No hair, no fuzz, no folded up notes that had been left in pockets (not even any money - darn).
Now, I'm hard pressed to say that my laundry created rusted, metal shards and clumps of sand in the washing machine drain. As you can see by the picture above, those drains are old and skanky - I think they did it to themselves. Shall I bill my landlord?
