Category: Drains

I’m so over having to unblock these drains by hand. Do you know how gross it is to put your hand down a drain and pull out a ball of hair? It’s completely gross to hand pick out balls of greasy hair from a drain. I’m not going to do it anymore, my wife is going to have to start being more responsible. She has very thick hair that tends to clog up the drains frequently. She’ll be in the shower and I’ll hear a yell and come in to see the water flowing back up from the sink. I’m going to leave the number for the blocked sewer company based in Melbourne on her nightstand, maybe she’ll get the hint. I don’t think I’m going to be able to fix the drains much longer anyway.

Each time it takes longer and is more difficult to fix. We really need to get a professional from drain inspections Melbourne to see what’s going on. My wife isn’t going to be happy when I turn the water off. Until she calls the team who deal with drain replacement, Melbourne pipes are old and in desperate need of repair.

I’m looking forward to them coming to fix my latest drain problems. There will be no water flowing in this household until that time. I have to put my foot down sometimes, it’s not like I haven’t tried to ask nicely. I’ve explained several times that she can’t just drop her hair down the shower drain. It’s not my fault that she doesn’t listen. Don’t get me wrong, I love my wife and we rarely ever have any problems, I’m just taking a stand. It’s important to stand up for what you believe in and not let people walk over you. I’m not going to be a pushover on things that are important. If the drains get too damaged it’s going to cost a lot of money to have them replaced.

I’ve always liked building, which I think is why people automatically assume I can do pretty much anything. I can’t, obviously…if you want me to build a shelf, or a shed, or maybe an igloo if times are really hard, but my skills stop at building. I don’t do electrical work, I can’t fix your broken hard drive and I especially hate plumbing. Had a few plumbing friends back when I was an apprentice, and I can tell you that it’s definitely not the life for me. Picked up a few skills from them, but nothing that would qualify my for doing any of their work, despite everyone thinking that I can do it.

I guess that’s a general curse of people who are good with their hands. If you can do one thing, you can do it all, right? Everything is just that intuitive. Nope. I didn’t become a plumber because I know what lies beneath the blocked drains in Melbourne and I’d rather do my work outdoors where you know the materials you’re working with. Plumbers also get called in for jobs at all hours. My mate Darren is an emergency plumbers, exclusively. He works the night shift and has for the last three years, because…I don’t know. He’s mad and doesn’t really need much sleep. Plus he doesn’t have that many friends, but I’m not sure if that’s a chicken or egg thing. If I worked night shifts unblocking drains and slept through the entire day, I’m not sure how many friends I’d have at the end of it all.

See, building work is reliable in terms of hours. No one wants building work to be done after hours when you’re at home, trying to sleep or get on with your life. Building work might start early, but it finishes on time or people start complaining. I guess Darren has to sleep through that, come to think of it.

So yeah. Could’ve been a plumber in Melbourne, maybe. Chose against it because I like to sleep. I don’t have the stern stuff to do plumbing 24 hours…

-Darryl

I asked my readers last week what kind of skill YOU’D like to have around the home. Nobody actually reads my blog, so there weren’t any replies. However the stress of being totally alone all the time has steadily driven me mad, so I’m perfectly capable of pretending that I had loads of responses.

The winner was plumbing, of course. Nobody likes it when the hot water runs out, stops working, becomes busted or is just too darn hot. That last one is often neglected, but it’s been estimated that around 10% of Melbourne emergency plumber callouts are due to people who run their hand under the tap and are burned and need someone to fix the tap so it just produces pleasantly warm water. Who wants their tap to spew forth boiling water, anyway? That’s what a kettle is for, or a saucepan on the stove if you’re just that medieval.

And then what if your cold water breaks down and you can only get hot stuff? Say it’s the summer, you’re sweltering without air conditioning and you just need a glass of cold water. Too ad you didn’t get that fixed while it was still winter and/or autumn! Now you’re stuck filling up a glass with hot water and putting it in the fridge, in the hopes that you’ll be saved from this plight. But then you have to wait about half an hour before that water reaches room temperature, so no luck there. Oh, what a sad situation.

If you’d trained as a plumber you could fix all of this yourself, and feel like an expert while doing it. You’d be the pride of the neighbourhood as you go from place to place, fixing their water services for a reasonable fee, just like an actual plumber. Except you WOULD be a plumber. Melbourne needs more plumbers, I think. I haven’t had hot water for seven months.

-Archibald

Getting stuck in the sewers really gives you some time to think. I’d really call it quality time, and perhaps this should be more of a thing. I know I fell in there like an idiot and couldn’t get out because of my stubby little arms that need some more time at the gym, but actually, seriously, hear me out. I had to wait until morning, and I had many profound thoughts.

Like, imagine all of Melbourne’s sewer repair people, doing their thing and having these great thoughts all the time, though maybe they’re hard at work and it’s not the same for them. There’s just something about the sewer that represents perfect desolation, like being in space but a bit lower than usual instead of higher.

What I’m trying to say is that, in the end, I shouldn’t be embarrassed about falling into the sewer, because it really was a learning experience for us all, or maybe just me. You could almost say that it was  GOOD thing that I fell in, spent sixteen hours wandering around in the dark and thinking great thoughts about drain repair and how much it really smells down there. I could give sewer tours, where nobody talks and we just enjoy the quiet. I’m not embarrassed, clearly, not at all. For one thing, I got all my Christmas shopping done…in my head. All that time to think, and I now know exactly what to get everyone I know, even the people I don’t like who won’t be getting a present anyway. How much stress is that off my mind? A lot! It’d be a lot off anyone’s mind!

So, the sewer. A wonderful place of profound thought. In fact, when the nice Melbourne drainage contractors found me wandering down there, covered in much, exhausted and pathetic, I almost didn’t want to come out. One day I’ll return. Not for a few years, though…but I totally will. You could almost say I meant to fall down there, and it’d almost be true. How about that?

-Spencer