Garage flooding again

Because we hadn't had anything go wrong for a while I guess, we dicovered the floor of the garage under a couple centimeters of water from the floor drain again like happened in 2019 right before Wax's mom died in the time of all the disasters.

The garage is mostly full of stuff, with not enough room for any car larger than like, a Ford Fiesta (vintage 1960s one). One whole wall just has our tenant's stuff leaning on it and our side mostly had like, cardboard boxes of books that are gonna have to go straight to the dump now because it was definitely sewer-tinged water. We spent two hours moving trash out of the way and squeegeeing the floor last night and we have to call a plumber today.

But when we came in last night I was moved to check my records of the last time it happened, so I got my journal for the period and right after and ended up combing through them to compile a detailed timeline of our house renovation. But in the process, we found out that right before the camera snake guys photographed the pipes but did not save the tape because nobody told them to and they didn't ask, a pump truck was here emptying the tank? We had both COMPLETELY forgotten about that, becuase Wax's mom was basically in charge of it, but there were several mentions in my journal so it definitely happened. We don't have the exact details, but I think that after the water first reappeared backing up from the floor drain the plumber or contractor ordered a pump truck, perhaps on Monday, and that Wednesday the drains in the tenant's/MIL's side of the house stopped draining, and the truck arrived Friday afternoon. At least this is some information and we know we likely have to have it drained again. Possibly they won't need to photograph everything with another camera snake because that cost two thousand bucks.

Garage water situation no longer urgent

This morning there was not really any new water in the garage, just the standing bit around the drain from last night. We called the plumber who fixed our radiators so promptly and described the sitch to him. Since the water was no longer rising, it wasn't exactly an emergency anymore (+yet), and he advised us that the problem would likely be fixed by having the septic tank under the garage emptied. At least, we THINK it's a septic tank? Wax now says she's quite sure that the drains from the tenant's side of the house go to this tank and NOT to the city water, and that the rain water was originally directed there too but through a mess of pipes installed by idiots, and with no outlet to the sewers. Anyway, we don't have a plan of the pipes or anything so we're not 100% sure on that, but it would explain the septic smell I guess... tbh, as stinky as it was, it wasn't really like pure undiluted sewage, but perhaps the quantity of rainwater dilution explains that...

Anyway! The plumber thought pumping it dry would help so we came inside to google for an appropriate pump truck service to call, and I hopped in the shower while Wax called. The guy asked her to text some details so she did and didn't hear back, so we made a grocery store run and while we were there he called like "I'm here, where do I go?" He had just jumped in the car and come right over! He was done in well under an hour, I'd say. I found my journal entry about draining the tank in 2019, and apparently that took 4.5 hours and required them to blast some blockages away with water. The drains work now and everything should be fine if we simply continue to have the septic tank emptied yearly. The tenant has not had her drains stop working, but has been noticing them being smelly quite recently. Exasperatingly, she didn't tell us, just told her bff, who (incorrectly) advised her to flush more often (because the smell wasn't due to the water not going down, it was due to the septic tank under the house being too full).

That was less than half the battle though. We had to fill the van with sewage-sodden books, cardboard, and other ruined stuff and cart a load of it to the town dump, in the process of which we both cut our hands in spite of wearing gloves. After lunch we filled the car again with 'donate' stuff which we had to drive to Turku, about an hour round trip, but we discovered on the way that the van was jerking all over the place, pretty constantly, when you accelerate, and it got worse, not better. We googled probable causes and apparently none of them meant it was about to explode or anything, but still not really good news. We DID make it to Turku and back, but I think we were both white-knuckling it a bit, and we left the van at the car fixing garage (which was closed for the day) and walked nearly half an hour home. At least the weather was nice.

There was sewage goop coming out of the floor in the sauna as well, and we also never disinfected the sauna after the original flood 2 years ago when the water was knee high (saunas are of necessity furnished in untreated wood). So we also contacted a local fixit service about having them clean it and the garage out for us, but unfortunately our tenant still has probably two to three trucks' worth of STUFF stacked along the wall of the garage, and any of it that was touching the floor and not waterproof is now potentially ruined, but she hasn't even had time to start going through it because she's trying to finish an article she's writing for a deadline. The garage floor can't be disinfected until her stuff is taken care of and moved out of the way.

Ultimately the biggest hero of this story is the fact that I had written about having the tank drained by pump truck in my journal two years ago, and the fact that last night I decided to check my journal to read what happened the last time the garage flooded (because that we DID remember, just not the pump truck). There weren't any details there, but it was the clue we needed for our next possible step and has likely saved us from otherwise having to have the whole system either inspected by a plumber (and apparently they're all busy in the area again so we'd've had to call someone from further away at higher rates) or even photographed again by camera snake for a couple of grand. That inspired me to comb through every mention of renovation in my journals from the interim and also to pick out the dates from our snapshots of the work we did ourselves, like the floor installations, painting and wallpaper and building the wardrobe, which were all taken on the day of. With that I was able to compile a complete timeline of the renovation (which isn't finished since we're still missing doorframes and new flooring and have three major walls to resurface). I also carefully wrote down what the professionals said and did, who they were, and what we did in my journal again.