For a couple months we'd had a weird kind of back-pressure phenomenon in our plumbing that manifested as slow-draining toilets and gurgling noises when you'd, say, run a tap in the bathroom. It wasn't blockage in the in-house lines, and nothing ever backed up. In short, it was annoying but not debilitating. Then came the snowstorm, and our plumbing's been fine ever since. Glad we never got around to calling someone to fix it.
how do you explain it?
ReplyDeleteYeti with a drainage compulsion?
ReplyDeleteAir in the line, is my hypothesis. The cold caused unequal thermal contraction to occur somewhere in the system, which let the air bubble mostly leak out, and now the line drains more freely. Many older homes are built with one, or very few standing vents. Modern US uniform building code, adopted in most states (but not in Europe) requires a separate air vent on every plumbing run, no matter where in the structure it is located.
ReplyDeleteI like the Yeti explanation better though =)
Sounds plausible. Only there's another very odd thing: all our neighbors had been experiencing similar problems at about the same time. I think the drainage gnomes had taken up residence in our block and only been scared away to warmer climes by the snowstorm.
ReplyDelete