Biggest mess on the Job

[Josh]

Ok... so tonight I made a pretty big mess in my basement. Only took 30 minutes to clean up though. So heres what I want.

What was the biggest mess you ever made on the job and what did it take to clean it up?

[Service Guy]

This is going to be good, I'll have to think about it....

[Drain Medic]

About 6yrs ago we were doing work in a room next to the kitchen in a hospital. We were looking for cleanouts to clear the main. I had a guy who i was training and he was only on the job for 5 weeks. He found a cleanout on the floor and decided to break it open with a hammer and chisel. One whack with the hammer and the head pressure blew the cap off and sent sewage at least 10ft in the air for a good 6 mins. Took us 3 hours to clean it up.

Another one happened probably 4yrs ago. The maint man for a highrise Apt. building wanted us to jet the kitchen stacks (4in) from the roof down to the sweeps. After pleading with him for an hour that it wasnt a wise move that all the junk in the stacks that havent been disturbed for years will buildup at the bottom of the stack and clog causing the 1st floor units to flood. He didnt seem to care to much and he said he would have someone on the 1st floor units watching the sinks. So going against my better judgement, and making him sign a waiver. We jetted the stack. Got the ok from the man on the 1st floor. We jetted the line for about 10mins. No work from the maint man on the 1st floor. We stopped jetting and went down to the 1st floor unit. No maint man around the door was openned. When we went in, there was 4in of black water on the entire floor, kitchen floor, living room floor, bathroom, bedroom floor. The ceiling was covered in black grease and dripping down, the kitchen sink was full of black water, it even came out of the laundry discharge. It was the worst mess i have ever seen in such a small place. The maint mas was down the hall talking to the hottie that lived there the whole time. Bummer for them.

[Bob D.]

Does this have to be a mess that we created ourselves or can it be one we witnessed on a job?

[Service Guy]

Alright , this one is not mine personally but its close. The first shop I worked in and learned the trade there was a great shop in Long island, New York, one of the techs there had over 20 years experience and he was one of the best plumbers I ever met. He told me a story he called the "Poseidon Adventures". He and the boss man went on a call in Riverhead, a public building had a major sewer backup. These guys were used to doing 'country plumbing' drain calls (mostly septic tanks) so they proceeded to open a cleanout in the basement, they forgot that this was not a septic tank, it was a city sewer connection....it turns out the entire public sewer was blocked in the street and they neglected to check the man-hole before they opened the cleanout....

The floods of Noah came flying out of that cleanout! :eek: They ran out of the room and tried to hold the door against the onslaught of raw sewage...it didn't help, the sewage rushed down the stairs and flooded the entire first floor. I don't know how they managed to clean it all up, but that story will live on in that shop for eternity.

[Josh]

Either

Does this have to be a mess that we created ourselves or can it be one we witnessed on a job?

[garager]

Biggest mess, without a doubt tearing down a house.... Beat that guys..... :eek: :D :D :D

[wrench spinner]

http://www.ridgidforum.com/photoplog/file.php?n=346&w=o

:thisthreadisworthle

[shup]

I worked for a company on this one.
Had a old house in a historic district of a old mining town. House caught fire and burned the second floor and one side of the bottom. It belong to a old women that refused to let the insurance company tear it down to rebuild.She had lived there with her husband for like 30 40 years. Had to tear out all the old burned out crap, rebuild it to county and city code,and because of the age had to fix a bunch of other things like foundation and bring all wiring and plumbing up to code. Was the craziest job I ever worked on. Every time you called for inspection the dam inspector would want or find something else he wanted done. Drove us crazy. Turned out nice though and the women cried when we were done. Made some us get a tear also.

8.5 weeks I'll see if I can find some pictures.

shup

[garager]

Nice story Shup..... :cool:

[garager]

http://www.ridgidforum.com/photoplog/file.php?n=346&w=o

:thisthreadisworthle

Always glad to see a home at the bottom of a hill, go down.... :D

Thanks for the picture, thats what I'm talking about...... :cool: :D

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa136/garager62/School/HighSchool005.jpg

[Tyman]

I've made my share. I was snaking a 2" galv. line that was backed up. Long story short, the line broke the cable came out and I had black crap everywhere. It took me a little over a hour to clean up.

To this day, when I snake galv. lines I remember that experience.

[HVAC HAWK]

i was sitting on top of a oil tank in a basement cutting something out with a sawzall and the other plumber was cutting the fill pipe to the tank and hit some power line .well it zapped me so bad i fell to the floor . as far as the mess well i had to clean the crap out of my pants :eek::eek: time 2hr i lived close and got back quick :rotflmao1::rotflmao1:

[shup]

as far as the mess well i had to clean the crap out of my pants :eek::eek: time 2hr i lived close and got back quick

:killingme::killingme:

[Bob D.]

Biggest mess, without a doubt tearing down a house.... Beat that guys..... :eek: :D :D :D

The reason I asked if it had to be our own mess or someone else's:

Years ago was working on construction of a generating station. The guys were doing a flush of the turbine lube oil system to get all the junk out from construction. System had to be near hospital clean inside, any bit or dirt or grit would damage the bearings on the 800MW generator.

Anyway, they are running the flush and this is an activity that takes days and days to complete. They stop the flush one day to change the oil and filters. The engineer in charge of the flush is also in charge of controlling the configuration of all valves, etc in the system. They go to start back up and he had forgotten to have the drain valve (4" gate) closed. Everyone is over by the pump when it starts up which is 2 levels away from the drain valve. Don't remember the size of the pump but by the time they figured out something was wrong they had 5000 gallons of very expensive oil in the basement. Took them about a week to clean up. Oil was into everything, down in the sumps, into the bottom of electrical cabinets. You couldn't walk anywhere because it was so slippery.

Engineer got fired and the job went on. :-) Kind of a shame as he was a decent guy, but his brain was cooked from all the hours we were working trying to get the unit testing done and ready for startup.

Moral of the story: Always check your valve lineup before you startup a system.

[Service Guy]

Bump this old thread....need more mess stories!:D

[Vince the Plumber]

i wasn't on this job but i would like to share it with you.

my boss was at the dart club one night.

his wife was at home when she heard "running water" in the bathroom.

upon investigating, she saw sewage spilling out of the wc.

she grabbed a bucket and started scooping buckets of the thick soup and emptying it in to the tub, then she realized the tub was filling up too. she gave up and walked out of the house leaving the front door open so the mixture wouldn't literally fill up the their house. it was running....., sorry, flowing out the front door.

here's the low down on the stink: the house in question is located at the bottom of a hill with several houses and a apartment block up stream.

the plastic sewer main collasped juuuuust a little down stream of their sewer connection.

liquids seek their own level right? in this case, the threshold of the front door was the flood level rim of the fixture. heh,heh.

want's that smell? pppoooooooo!!!

it's not code up here yet for a back water valve.

i wonder how many times this is going to happen before we figure it out.

we're nice people up here, we're just a little slow on the up-take.:D

i love poo

[tchads]

I was working on a force main replacement in Ocean City, NJ in the 70's. They sent a town worker to shut down the pump while the old pipe was removed. Needless to say he shut down the wrong pump and when the main was broken it was a sewage thunderstorm. Said "See ya, we'll finish the layout tomorrow." Never found out the extent of the cleanup.

[G3sprinklers]

was working at a plastics plant and in the break room the was a wall with a kitchen sink on one side and a water fountain on the other. Everybody that dipped or chewed would spit in the water fountain and it eventually plugged up the drain. Well their maint. guys got the bright idea to use an air hose to blow out the clog. Took a rag and wrapped it around the air nozzle and held it over the drain of the fountain, big shot of air and drain cleared, well at least out kitchen sink side. Should of heard Miss prim and proper cuss them out, hit her right in the face, she was wearing a white sun dress with brown spit all over it. Could not of happened to a better person, she was a real be-atch.

G3

[Ace Sewer]

Called out in the dead of night one winter to a sewer backup in a condo building, a smaller older one, more like an apt building. Get there and there is already 6"-8" of sewage in the basement and even through the water the 2" floor drains are geysering another 6" in the air. Called dispatch to get the san district guys out... they had a blocked main. Took them about 15 min to get there, by which time it had come up another foot.

The whole basement was plywood storage lockoffs for the residents, except for the area where the boilers were starting to swim. Don't know if they got the boilers working again in time to keep the building from freezing as I bugged out once the city guys arrived.