Plumb Incontinent
Or, why your plumber appreciates you working on your Kegel exercises
I hadn’t been standing there much more than a few seconds after knocking when the customer opened her door. I first saw her eyebrows round the door’s corner as her smiling visage slowly emerged in the six inch gap.
I greeted her. “Hello again, ma’am!” The job lead and I, his apprentice for the day, had already paid her an initial visit the day previous when the problem was diagnosed, solution proposed, work and its cost accepted by her, and now we were back to actually do the thing. A plumber’s work, believe it or not, is mostly interesting and can often veer into the realm of the enjoyable. Fun, even. When the customer is sweet, as this day’s customer was, it’s even better.
“We’ve excavated the area and got the sewer line exposed, so we’re ready to cut into it. Just wanted to make sure you didn’t need to use any sinks or toilets one more time before we get going here.” My polite offer was not born entirely from beneficence. An element of self-preservation motivated my brief visit to her front porch.
On the docket? A sewer line repair.
It’s a rare day in Georgia for a home to be built on a plot of flat property. Not unheard of, but not common, at least not where I’m at. The category of “flat” doesn’t find much useful application in relation to the state’s topography. “Undulating,” “rolling,” “hilly”; all of these fit much better. What this equates to are homes that appear to be one or maybe two stories from the front, but will have an additional, hidden (from the street) story built into the back side of the hill on which the home is constructed. Some folks leave this unfinished and use it for storage. Others will finish it in to make it livable space. Driveways, if they don’t go into a front garage, will also follow the hill and if there is a septic tank or the public sewerage runs through the back of the property, the sewer line must abide by the sloped grade as well.
A sewer is required by code to be both a certain depth — so as to prevent other utilities or irrigation from accidentally intersecting with it, or, in colder regions, from freezing; and to maintain a certain pitch depending on its diameter — too little pitch and the water doesn’t move fast enough to carry itself and it’s load of solids down the line, too much pitch and the water moves so fast it separates from the solids, leaving them behind. After the artery intended to convey the home’s refuse is first installed and the trench in which it’s laid is backfilled, gravity and water will pull and push the disrupted soil entombing the pipe downward. When proper support isn’t supplied, it can become disfigured as the dirt shifts and, in certain extreme enough situations, crack or even completely separate. When this happens, waste from a home cascades into the ground for a time until the solids build up to such a density that water can’t get past and it has no choice but to fill the sewer line backwards, returning from whence it came.
Such was the case for this poor woman and her plumbing. Down the driveway near the side of the house, just outside a window that allowed light into a game room, we had spent roughly two hours jackhammering about an eight foot by six foot section of concrete, removed its chunks to a spoil pile, and excavated the dirt underneath, exposing the gravity-ravaged sewer. Downstream of the crack, the earth had settled considerably more than that sitting under the sewer upstream of that point, and this didn’t appear to us to be anyone’s fault—this was not the shoddy work of a careless construction plumber. Rather, the density of the ground a couple feet that way just happens to be a little less than that of the ground right here. The Georgia dirt may be full of rocks, but it is no monolith.
“Okay, darlin’,” my customer said, “give us five minutes to use everything one more time and then we should be good.” I was happy to comply. After all, I didn’t want to cut into the sewer only for someone in the home to succumb to incontinence, garden variety forgetfulness, or an ornery streak. All of them end with me swimming in the dirtiest of martinis.
Ten minutes later (can’t be too sure, y’know?), we dropped a fresh blade onto the PVC and cut out about three feet of the sewer line. As soon as this happened, we discovered just how settled the downstream portion of the line had become: the pipe jutting out from the ground below and the pipe angled down from the driveway above were no longer in line with each other. Like chopsticks in the awkward, cramped grip of one learning their proper use, these two sections of sewer were headed in different directions. The upper section could be pressed down and the lower section pulled up to align them, but this would require gravel to bed the repaired pipe, gravel we didn’t have.
So it was back up to the front porch to tell the missus that we’d be headed to grab some material, an unforeseen clog in the flow of the day, that we’d grab a quick bite while we were out, “and please don’t forget to not use the drains while we’re gone. We’ll be back as quickly as we can!”
About an hour later, we returned. We had made haste so as not to leave our customer waiting long.
The trench, dry and dirt-y when we departed, was no longer so upon our arrival. A chorus of mud squelches announced our homecoming. Water and urine filled the bottom of the trench. Toilet paper and corn garnished a celebratory crap cocktail. It was cold that day, as evidenced by the Cheeto Puff-sized turd that perched precariously at the opening of the upper section of pipe, steaming in the cool air. Delightful, I thought. And it’s fresh. You’ll never know how badly you want to do this work until you’re being stared down by a still-steaming turd and you’re fairly certain you know the face of the person from whose bowels it was expelled.
After donning rubber gloves and trying to scoop as much of the slop into the lower section of pipe as possible, we continued with the repair. A damp layer of soiled soil remained in the trench, but not so much that we couldn’t do our work. We took some measurements, made a cut, dry fit the pipe to verify our measurements were accurate, grabbed our glue, and slid the couplings into position. Everything was prepped and ready for the connection to be made. All that was left was to actually make it.
My role in this operation was to grab hold of the lower pipe and manfully lift it into alignment with the upper section while the master primed, glued, and slide the coupling into place, thereby sealing the sewer back shut and restoring to our customer, whose diet I now had a rough idea of, the full function of her home. Simple enough.
My lungs drew in the crisp air as I steeled my will for the fight ahead.
I descended upon the PVC with latex’d hands, my back straight and legs bent, Florida Man levels of readiness as I grappled with the crocodilian crap chute. I grasped it. I throttled it. I put the absolute man on that pipe. I straightened my legs. My opponent, much to my surprise, yanked slopward. My grip slipped before I knew what was happening.
SLAP
A shower of Satan’s soup soil burst from the trench and rained in every direction. I—hovering over the pipe in imitation of the Holy Spirit over the primordial waters of creation—had the momentary quality of being in every direction in which the cursed material was raining. My shirt, my pants, my boots, my arms, my neck, my forehead, my mustache, my beard: covered. My nostrils were filled like a newborn’s diaper. I’m pretty sure I shut my lids fast enough to keep any from contacting my eyes, but my eyelids were not spared. Thankfully, I’d learned early on that plumbing is mouth-closed work so the only thing I could taste was the distinct bitterness of humble pie.
Incontinence, forgetfulness, or orneriness? Which was the cause for this situation? It didn’t matter. I’d been whooped.
Like any good Millennial, I asked the master to hand me a rag so I could wipe off my face and take a selfie.
I smarted up with a quickness and grabbed a choice chunk of concrete, thick enough that it wouldn’t sink into the soup and vaguely triangular. The perfect fulcrum. Next, I gripped hold of my shovel. I placed its wooden handle on the concrete. The tip of the spade wedged under the PVC. I pressed down. It lifted up. Alignment: achieved. I lost the first round but I’d come out on top, even if a little poopy.
The master primed, glued, slid, sealed. The bedding and backfilling took less than fifteen minutes. We floated a concrete patch.
I hadn’t been standing there much more than a few seconds after knocking when the customer opened her door. I saw her eyebrows round the door’s corner first as her visage, transforming from a smile to a thinly veiled grimace, emerged in the six inch gap. I stood there beaming at her like a steaming turd on the edge of a pipe.
“We’re done, ma’am.”
This is, as I hope the picture above goes some distance to prove, a real story. I think of it every now and again but have never told it properly, something the poem below inspired me to finally do. This is a little different from my normal fare, but I hope it amused you to read it as much as it amused me to tell it.
The late Robert Stewart, poet and essayist, was the son and grandson of plumbers and spent his summers working as an apprentice for them. His poetry — not all plumbing related — depicts life in the trades from the inside, and the piece I’ve included below is proof that the man knew of what he wrote.
I, like him, have lived and worked “where some have lost control.” Enjoy.
The Plumber’d Like to Teach the World to Kegel
by Robert Stewart
First, understand Kegel's exercise: Contract the muscles that could stop urination, as if the phone were to ring and you had to know the worst. Such knowledge strengthens the perineum, the whole pelvic floor, and no one will even know you're doing it. Practice Kegels at parties or reading the scariest headlines of the morning, an isometric of squinting up at yourself-- prepares you for days when the child- like in us might even irrigate the trough of a pew. I remember McNamara, the plumber foreman, as he climbed into the ditch each morning while the sewer was still dry and clean as we like to imagine our own deep plumbing, before the tidy households up the hill took leave at once of those obligations we think will never come to light. McNamara cussed the morning and prayed to teach the world to Kegel, to contract and monitor, to measure and to know somewhere down the line where flushes mount each other in a wave, a plumber might be working, or worse, an apprentice like myself, unsuspecting as anyone who lives and works where some have lost control.
Every time I've had a plumber to my house, I've been grateful. Stuff like this is important; it gives a more rounded perspective to folks out there who have no idea how difficult (and technical) jobs like this can be.
I know it wouldn't be super popular, but I think it would be amazing if everyone had to work as a line cook, server, plumber, and maybe a few other tough jobs that folks tend to think are less-than-essential (at least, prior to 2020 that's how these folks were viewed!). This could be like civil service in other countries, so people develop empathy and legit understanding of another person's craft.
Death & Plumbing...it’s got a certain ring to it! Maybe we collaborate one day!