House traps (Dan H.)

DanHolohan

at the Nassau County PHCC Plumbers picnic (thanks, Mad Dog), I asked a couple of the guys about what they had pulled out of house traps over the years. Got some really funny answers.

How about you?

Brad White_9

Uh, Dan....

This is breakfast time.... can this wait until later?

DanHolohan

Oh,

sorry! ;-)

keith_20

about tweo weeks ago i removed a piece of soft copper 3*8 + 12"

jackchips_2

Do you

mean other than my arm?

LOL

Jack

Patchogue Phil_29

Retrived at my brother's house trap:

* Scrubbie-type sponge

Cast iron trap had actualy "rotted" to very thin with holes. Plumber thought someone had used too much acid to dissolve prior clogs. The sponge was most likely after the acid pour.

I have heard of other stuff found in main traps:

* Action figure toys

* Q-tips

* Cotton hand towels

* Balls (tennis, plastic, pingpong)


So, Dan, what are the funny ones you heard at the picnic?

DanHolohan

$520

The customer was fighting with his wife and she flushed his money down the toilet. He called the plumber I was chatting with right away!

Cosmo_3

Feline clog

About 12 years ago, it was new home and the new homeowners were there for 2 days when I got the desperate call....HELP!! Our shower drain is backing up!!!!!!!

When I got there, I noticed that the housetrap cleanout fittings were missing and the effluent was spilling over the upstream house trap cleanout.

Well, I shined a flashlight down into the trap and thought I saw a t-shirt or something.

So I got (my) manhole cover hook in there, and when I pulled it out it was a rotting cat corpse. Yeah, and I was planning on getting some chinese for lunch too.

The homeowner saw it and said that his neighbor had been asking around the the neighborhood about his missing cat..........

The homeowners landscaper removed the clean-out fittings with the intention of cutting the pipes down to the level of the landscaping and simply forgot to replace the fem adapters w/ plugs. I don't glue the female adapters for the clean-outs right away because I go back to cut them level with the landscaping myself when it is ready. I called to make an appointment to do this work the next week. Seems that the landscaper was gonna do me a favor.......gee thanks

I never found out whether or not the homeowner told his neighbor about our discovery.......



Cosmo

Dave Yates (GrandPAH)_1

First guy I worked for.........

did not have a closet auger, so on my very first clogged house trap call (inside above grade), he told me this was where the boys and men were separated in this trade. Let's just say I passed his test. When I found out about closet augers, I about would have liked to wrap one around his neck! That was a "soft" stoppage.

Fish (flushed pet); birds; golf balls; marbles; softball; baseballs; 2x4 lumber (new construction); clean out plugs from upstream cleanouts; Sloan valve caps; false teeth; a diamond ring; contact lens; clumps of stuff from batch-feed garbage disposals - like crab salad (all 20-Lbs of it) stuffed into a commercial batch-feed disposal one night at 3-AM; toys; cups; toothbrushes; pens; pencils; swizzle sticks; glass from broken beer bottles and glasses in bar rooms; bottle caps and pull tabs; toothpicks; cotton tipped ear pickers; scrubbies; paper towels; underpants; clothing (from a jailed prisoner who arrived as a woman but left as a man!); vegetables (don't ask, don't tell policy!); hypodermic syringes; mason jar lids; diapers; grease; clotted laundry soaps (more prevalent with powdered detergents); mud; ostomy bags; and the old reliable - feminine products that claim to be flushable, which have their own nick-names among tradesfolk. Pretty much anything that can be flushed, ground & drained or dropped into an open cleanout or line.

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Glen

and 2 pounds of -

a rather curious "herb", well packaged but soggy. Tenants were given other accomodations for a while.

Paul Pollets

maybe...

...that's why housetraps aren't required in the stae of WA.

UPC code

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Jim Bennett

Not a house trap but...

I pulled a garage door remote out of a water closet once. At first I was unsure what it was, a pc board with wires and LED's protruding from it. Then one of the tenants identified it. NICE!

Got a large key ring with about 10 - 12 keys on it out of an ejector once, even had a large key fob attached. Musta been a power flush.

Also removed a door knob stuck in the outlet of my Brother in Laws toilet once. As he went to leave the bathroom, the doorknob came off in his hand, flew and landed in the closet. He thinks to himself "I'm not reaching for that" and gives it a flush.

When it wouldn't go down, he called me.

You can pick your nose, but you can't pick your family!

Jim

kevin coppinger_4

same here in...

NH...in fact I belive they are not allowed...kpc

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frank_25

well ya had to bring up that subject of house traps or not. For those of you that care, I got my NYC Master Plumbers License in '75, and my feeling is I wouldn't want to vent the public street sewer through my home. By venting my own system, the air borne bacteria is drawn up the vent stack and dispersed, and it's from only my waste. God forbid a fuel truck dumps it's load into a combined sewer, those flamable gases through my house??? Not on MY life. NYC uses vent holes in the man-hole covers as the venting medium. Nothing else said about this could change my mind. But what dio I know? I'm just a plumber.

singh

I know

of a cell phone that poped off the belt clip and fell in the w.c.
I did not have a chance to grab it , it had automatic flush : (

My very first union job was in a 300 unit rehab in brooklyn, ny.
The foreman told me and the laborer that sometime you can "strike it rich"
by busting open the old 8" house trap. Sorry, not for me, but the laborer took to
it with a sledge hammer. After sorting thru the muck he found a quarter and a plastic comb.

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adambuild

1.6!!!

I showed up at this client's house after she complained that both of the new KOHLER 1.6's we installed in her two bathrooms weren't flushing right and she wanted them out! I was so upset. For kicks, when I got there, I used the auger and pulled out a hand towel from the first one, I couldn't believe it. Then I go to the second one and pulled out...................a hand towel!!!!!!!!!! She was so embarrased. They're flushing fine ever since!

Steamhead (in transit)

I'll have to try that

on the Gerber "Viper" we recently put in the shop ;-). So far we haven't come up with a way to clog it with normal waste, even the occasional paper towel.

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Tony_23

Very few house traps here

But...

I've pulled out silverware, combs, pencils, a screwdriver, frame work to a storm window, hundreds of cotton ponies, shredded pea pods from the disposal, but the strangest thing was a typewriter ribbon reel. The grossest but funniest and most embarrassing one was a condom that got caught on an unglazed portion of the waterway of a toilet. Filled with water and shut things right down. I guess it did it's job, it didn't leak

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Paul Pollets

consider this...

all fixtures have a trap. Why double trap each fixture?

A better argument can be made for having a device at the building sewer to catch valuables before they leave the house forever!

I had a client that threw her $80K emerald ring into the toilet after catching her boyfriend with another gal. Her boyfriend had just given her the ring to make-up with her for another tryst he was caught in....I was able to retrieve the ring after pumping out the 5000g septic and running the effluent through a screen. It was not pleasant. Yes, she was charged accordingly.

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Dave Yates (GrandPAH)_1

the fresh air vent

That's why the fresh air vent is placed between the two traps. My list was derived over 37-years time of servicing homes, businesses and institutions that have house trap sets as required by our local codes. (99% of things caught by a house trap have no business being in the sanitary sewer line in the first place.) They're the cheapest insurance policy money can buy for adding safety to the DWV system, improving sanitation, enhancing flow, and blocking sewer gases from the street mains from entering a building. Even if I moved to a place where they were not required or permitted, I'd install a trap set for my family's benefit.

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jackchips_2

GrandPAH,

the contrarian rebel.

Jack

Cosmo_3

I'm with you Dave

How can I dispute the work of the dead men of the plumbing world. Seems we have gone from an evolution of plumbing systems, to dumbing ourselves down to the rest of the worlds level. The one thing this country can claim as a gift to the world is our residential sanitary sewer design. Okay, that and taper threads....

Cosmo
PAH, proud PHCC member

Jim Bennett

Eeeeuuuwwwhhh!!

Snagged a condem once with the auger! Removed it with the Torch!

Cosmo_3

That must have created some noxious fumes!


Cosmo

Albert Huntermark

The problems a sewer can cause!

The stuff that you pull out of sewers amazes me at times but after almost 30yrs in the trade nothing surprises me anymore! However, one eel job I'll never forget, it was back in 1978, when I was an apprentice. I was sent to one of the more affluent neighborhoods in our area. The plumbing contractor that I worked for plumbed this particular "mini-mansion" a couple of years before. An attractive mother and teenage daughter team, both in their short tennis dresses greeted me. Both spoke in helpless dainty and "prim & proper" tones explaining that they returned home from playing tennis and found the basement laundry room flooded and that they needed my help desperately. I found the fresh air inlet outside and dropped a cable into it, that quickly, like magic, the problem was fixed, I amazed both of them. However their elated moods changed on a dime when I pulled the cable from the fresh air inlet. More "magic" because at this point it was as though I turned invisible at least to them! A heated argument between these gals quickly ensued when hanging from the cable among the debris were a couple of condoms! The dainty "prim & proper" language went a bit to the "gutter" side if you will with mom now upset with her little princess! The mystery was solved as to why the phone wasn't answered the previous afternoon; hey, I could understand why the daughter never heard her mother's call home! In that little bit of time that followed, I learned what type of protection mom & dad used, (not that form by the way, T.M.I. for me!), the daughter had a new boyfriend, and that his parents would be getting a call, it went on and on! As though I was still invisible, they both went into the house screaming at one another. I loaded my equipment into the truck and left. The boss sent them the bill in the mail!