Mister Plumber

A small disaster which turned out to be a good discovery.... I was laying new laminate down in the basement laundry room, and discovered a sizable hole leading under the floor, seemingly caused by erosion. I poured concrete in there, and all seemed well until I went to use the laundry sink, which suddenly would not drain. Water welled up out of my fresh concrete. ARghgh!! So it turned out that hole contained a 100 year old open drain leading directly to the sewer, which the smaller laundry sink drainpipe drained into. At some point 60 years ago or whatever, there was a concrete shell attaching the smaller drainpipe to the larger one, but this concrete had crumbled away, largely into the drainpipe. So when we did laundry, some water would slosh out of the old drain and into the ground beneath the concrete floor, which explains the perma-damp. When I poured new concrete to fill up the floor hole, I just poured it down the old drain fer gods sake. To say I was unhappy is a huge understatement. So that's the back story.

This all happened late one evening. l logged onto Homestars (which has not failed me yet, as far as finding good service in Toronto -- 10 stars for Homestars!) and searched for a reasonably priced plumbing service that would fix this mess up as fast as possible. Mister Plumber took my call in the morning, and had someone out within just a couple of hours. It was all fixed by the end of the afternoon, The ancient drainpipe and my new concrete was removed, and a new pipe installed. The laundry sink was hooked back up and concrete installed over all. The plumber who came to fix it all up was Slava. He did a fine job and was polite and a hard worker.

I felt the overall price was a really good one for the amount of work done.

I'm glad I discovered there was an open drain. But I gotta say, pouring concrete down the drain as a way to discover that, was a gut wrenching experience.