Normally, I don't share real life stuff on the blog. For me, the blog is a way to share my fun experiences with you. Hopefully, some of the things I've done or my fishing reports will entice others to go fishing, hiking, or a concert. However, I had a major plumbing problem the last couple of weeks. I called the Gem Boys from Gem Plumbing and DID NOT have a good experience. I did end up saving hundreds of dollars in the long run. My blog is the easiest way to explain the situation. This story is much too long for Facebook. My hope is that others will learn from my experience.
Last week, my plumbing backed up. I borrowed the hand snake from work, opened the end cap, and tried to get rid of the clog. No luck. We had a problem many years ago with a clog. We needed a thing called a hydro jet to clean it. The jet is so powerful, it can cut through tree roots that can get in your sewer line. I didn't call a regular plumber and went with the "franchise" because I knew I'd probably need the hydro jet.
I sent a request to Gem on their website and set up an appointment. In the request I made sure to ask for the hydro jet. An hour later Gem confirmed the appointment for Thursday December 7. When I talked to the very nice lady, I again made sure to explain that a hydro jet might be needed.
Mike from Gem called and said he would be over in 15 minutes. When he got there we had to crawl through the hole into the crawl space (which is tall enough to stand in. Most plumbers and heating guys do not enjoy climbing through the hole. However, this guy complained the whole time he put on his knee pads. Then he told me "they never should have built these houses". My house is an old converted summer cottage. So it is old and small. Still it is mine so who the hell was he to insult it.
He DID NOT have the hydro jet. Instead he did have an electric snake. He had no desire to bring it down the crawl space so he suggested we go in through the toilet. While climbing my steps he said they looked like a bomb went off (there are some cracks in the cement). Then when we go to my bathroom which was small, he said "this is like living in a trailer park. Since my bathroom was small, he said he'd have to go through the crawl space with the snake..
He got into his van to get a price.The cost was going to be about $800 to snake it. There is a fee of around $200 that Gem charges just because it is a crawl space. It is not like there is more labor. Sure it might be more difficult to access, but what are we talking here, five minutes?
In a huge irony, my brother had a sewer back up on Sunday that flooded his basement. Roto Rooter came out on a Sunday for an emergency call with three guys and charged $900. This guy and Gem were coming out for a weekday appointment alone and was going to charge $800. I told him I'd try to figure something else out. I went inside to write the $59 check for coming out.
When I went back outside he asked me if I was willing to get the work done for $600. I told him yes as long as we could guarantee the clog would be removed. I was not paying $600 with the possibility that I would still need the HYDRO-JET. He said the only guarantee was that we would all die someday. He couldn't or wouldn't guarantee the work. I told him thanks anyway.
At this point when he realized he did not have to go back into my cellar his entire personality changed. He became a nice guy. He mentioned that Home Depot rents power snakes for $90/day and that I could try that. He even explained to me while looking at his how to use it and gave me tips. Then he took off.
I went to Home Depot borrowing the spare Honey Dew truck. The rental power snake costs $72 for four hours it weighs one hundred and sixty pounds, but it is on wheels. I had a tough time getting into the crawl space. Most of the weight is in the iron coil so I had to unwrap it to get it down. Then I had to rewrap it before I could even start (this took almost 90 minutes)
Once I was in position I fed the snake into my main sewer pipe. The thing spins out of an apparatus that looks like a fan. It took an hour to get it through. I probably used over ninety feet of the 100 it comes with. After I snaked it through, I put it in reverse to rewrap it. Once back, I put a cutting tool on the end and snaked it again. This went a lot quicker because I had broken the clog on the first run.
Mike had told me not to start with the cutting tool because if it came across a big root it would get stuck and I'd never get it out (kind of like getting an ax stuck into a log your splitting, sometimes it gets deep and is a bitch to pull out). Once done, I had to carry the coil out of the crawl space because the machine would have been too heavy to carry if I rewrapped it. Once out, I wrapped the coil back up. I brought it too Home Depot with 3 minutes to spare (they would have just charged me for another hour)
When I got home, I took a much needed shower. Then I washed a couple of loads of clothes. I flushed the toilet about 15 times. It seems like I got the clog. I do not have any backup and the toilet pressure seems powerful.
So because Gem was going to overcharge me, I have $500 in my bank account right now that I would not have had if they weren't so overpriced. My experience with Gem was not good. The fact that he insulted my house multiple times was very unprofessional. As I also said, he complained about the crawl space multiple times also. It also bothered me that the service was not guaranteed. Once I told him I wasn't going to have him do the work, Mike did help me out with the Home Depot idea.
The point of this story is, if you have a clog it might be worth your time and effort to try to fix it yourself. If you can rent a power snake, it could save you hundreds of dollars. For the cost of $72 it is well worth taking the chance that you can fix it. Worse case scenario, your out $72. It was a dirty job (although the water in the pipe was relatively clean, since I only washed dished and showered in the week before my appointment. I did not use the toilet in that week). So I got a little dirty but saved what became almost two hundred dollars an hour!
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