Down the drain

There are certain perks that come with renting a house from your in-laws. We don't have a lease, and we didn't have to pay a security deposit. We also know the in-laws don't want my wife to move home, so we're not too worried about eviction if we're a few days late with the rent.

It also helps that my father-in-law, Mr. Fix It, can fix just about anything. That's good because our house was built sometime around the signing of the Magna Carta. I'm about as handy as the Venus de Milo, so Mr. Fix It comes over on a semi-regular basis to unclog drains, do electrical work and fix leaky pipes. During these occassions, I help out with vital tasks such as, Holding the Ladder and Aiming the Flashlight. I do what I can, which is mostly staying out the way and trying not to embarrass myself.

The biggest problem with our house is that the basement floods. This isn't a huge deal because we don't use our basement for much, and the few insignificant things (ie, mine) stored there are on pallets. The basement has three floor drains, but the floor isn't level and the most efficient drain is on the side of the floor water runs away from.

Mr. Fix It came over a month ago and fixed one of the malfunctioning drains, but the third appeared to be a lost cause. A few days later he gave my wife a bottle of drain unclogger (I'm pretty sure that's the tecnical term for it) to give to me. I was about to go downstairs and pour the bottle in the drain when The Wife suggested I read the directions.

This was not your run-of-the-mill drain unclogger. It wasn't Drano or Liquid Plummer. No, this was hard-core poison. I won't mention the brand name of this heinous, ineffective product because I don't like to be sued, but I will share some of the fun facts from the back of this bottle of fun. It said things like:

Use in a ventilated are.
Wear protective eyewear.
Wear a facemask.
Wear rubber gloves.
Do not stand directly over drain because drain may erupt after use.
Put a dust pan or other protective covering over drain.
Do not taunt drain unclogger.

Strange, I forgot to use the drain unclogger until the next time Mr. Fix It stopped by. We went downstairs, and he poured the liquid into the drain. He did not wear a mask, protective eyewear or rubber gloves. It didn't really matter because the drain did not erupt. It also did not drain. It did fill up with poison, stopping at the top of the drain hole.

Then he left.

No big deal, I planned to flush it with water later, per the bottle's lengthy instructions.

I went back later and poured water into the drain, which was still full. As the water and poison merged, there was no eruption and no drainage. In a surprising twist, adding water to a full, clogged drain actually causes the drain to overflow.

Huh.

The water/poison mixture mocked me with a lingering hiss.

At this point, I had no idea what to do, possibly because I was breathing poison vapor. I did know that poison was bad for dogs and cats, and we have both. So I locked the basement and told The Wife not to let anyone down there. A week went by, and I guess I was hoping the poison would go down the drain, disappear or evaporate. It did not. I ignored it.

Another week went by.

I went back to visit the drain, hoping the problem had solved itself. Alas, the problem was multiplying. The pool of liquid poison that had overflowed the drain had mutated into something that looked like a pile of wet charcoal and old coffee grounds, and it was growing.

I ran away.

A few days later, I went back to visit the pile. It was bigger and appeared to be molding.

I asked Mr. Fix It what I should do.

"Dig it out," he said.

Armed with rubber gloves, a screwdriver and a putty knife, I did as I was told. As I put my screwdriver into the drain, I thought, "If this was a cartoon, my screwdriver would bend and melt." It did not.

I scooped the poison out of the drain, scraped as much of the crusted gunk off the cement floor as I could and threw it all in the trash outside.

Unfortunately, there is still quite a bit of poison residue on my basement floor, and I have no idea how to get rid of it. It probably will still be there the next time Mr. Fix it stops by.