When we arrived here directly from the airport 3.5 weeks ago, we entered the apartment and found there was no water. Fortunately, with some effort my husband discovered that the previous tenants had turned the water off, and after turning it back on, we had water in most of the apartment – except for our kitchen.
When the tenants first moved here, they didn’t like the kitchen faucet so they replaced it. When they moved, they understandably wanted to take it with them, so they removed it and replaced the old faucet. The only problem was, the old faucet wasn’t connected to the water supply line, so it didn’t help us much.
After two weeks, the seller agreed to pay someone to replace the faucet, and we were so glad when that was finally done! The only thing was, when we ran the water, it didn’t drain down – at all.
By this time we realized that we couldn’t expect the seller to leave the apartment in the agreed upon working condition (when the second floor didn’t have any electricity because of something the tenants did when they removed their air conditioner, we had to pay to have it fixed), but to be fair, he allowed us in to the apartment when he only had 80% of the money, and had to wait another 10 days for the final payment. We didn’t want to start agitating about what wasn’t done because then he could have claimed we owed him the penalty fee for not having the loan closed on the date written in the lease, so we felt it all balanced out.
Anyway, I couldn’t understand how the sink had been used at all before we came – the water literally didn’t move down the sink. Dh didn’t want to pay a plumber to take care of it because our financial outlays have been significant and this is something he felt he could handle. He bought a ‘snake’, opened up the pipes, and found a blockage unlike anything he had ever seen before. He was trying and trying to get through it, and kept coming out with tiny pieces of plaster. He finally said to me, “Is it possible they poured concrete down the sink??”
We couldn’t imagine that anyone would do that on purpose, and as I was thinking about it, it occurred to me that they moved out before doing the painting and plastering that they started, and probably rinsed off the plaster and paint in the sink. Since they weren’t living in the apartment and running the water, it hardened in the pipes and created a complete blockage.
My husband has been working on this for a week and a half; some of the time, he’s left the pipe under the sink open and the water runs into a bucket, which we pour into the toilet when it gets full. Sometimes he closes it back up and the water doesn’t go down at all.
But my husband is persistent and didn’t give up when most people would have thrown up their hands and agreed this was a case for the experts, and today he totally cleared the kitchen pipes! After weeks of washing dishes in the bathroom and feeling like there was always a pile of something waiting to be washed (because there was much less room there), it is SO nice to be able to use our kitchen sink for all of our kitchen needs!
Avivah
