Here we go again . . .

 Yep. . . . there's digging involved in this one too .

Back in April when the basement sump pump was going full-tilt-boogie we had some spray back issues around my blue foam collar where the sump pump pipe goes into the clay drain tile .

Meaning that the clay drain tile was getting clogged with maple tree roots again . 

 About twelve years ago we had the same problem , so I rented a rotor rooter and got about two wheel barrows full of roots out of it . Evidently it was time to ream it out again . 

Called the local RotorRotter Service and they wanted six hundred fifty dollars just to send a camera down the pipe . Another six hundred to solve the problem . EEEgads . . . No thanks .

 Went to Big Orange and rented this rig for 75$ and went at the clay tile for about three hours

And pulled this mess out of the pipe . 

For a sense of scale that root on the lower right there is about 3/8ths of an inch thick

Success . . . . it seemed to run clear when I put the garden hose down the pipe . . .  

Yea . . . don't celebrate so quick  . . . about a month later the problem reappeared .

So I looked around to rent a pipe camera . . .  no one in town had one . . .

Then I hit up my friend Dave , the man in charge down at the Waste Water Treatment plant , and within a couple days he showed up at my door with this rig . 

A giant colonoscope for elephants .

Fancy rig even tells you how far it goes down the pipe and rings a bell when it hits standing water .

Measured it out from the corner of the house and to a point sighting down the side of the garage across the street . At least that was what I remembered it to be from when they laid the new storm drains ten years ago . Then went at it for a couple hours fighting roots and cursing til I was four feet down .

Yea , you should have stopped after two feet found ya nothing you retard . . . . aghhhhhh... 

OK , time put the tools away and sleep on this one . 

The next morning I thought to look at the photos I had taken back when they put the new storm drains in the street for some guidance locating my connection to the street .

 And sure enough , if you sight from the end of the fence where it meets the house right past the bricks around the maple tree , there it is .  I had been digging on the wrong side of the mailbox post .

Fifteen minutes of digging , and about two feet down I found it .

A couple more hours of  . . .

Cursing the maple roots . . .

. . . got me enough working space to try and open the pipe up

To find this mess and a bunch more of it up stream out of reach

So off to Big Orange again for a hundred feet of inch and a quarter polyethylene pipe . 

Yea I only needed about forty five feet of it and they only sell hundred foot rolls .

A bunch of whittling on a piece of inch and a half thick dowel . . .

Gets me this . . . 

 . . . that I attach to one end of the black poly pipe with a drywall screw .

and send in the basement window , down the clay drain tile . . .

. . . till it comes out thirty seven feet downstream at the far end .

 

Cut the wooden torpedo off .

 

Then an hour more of colorful language to make that pipe stub I had saved from scraps they left on my lawn ten years ago fit in place of the broken clay tile I deleted .

Cause things don't exactly line up , and the female end of the pipe stub has a big fat O-ring to seal it except it takes a bulldozer to push it on . 

I manged to bend my six foot steel pry bar trying to lever that pig on .

But I finally managed to get it all together and wrapped it with some Bituthane for good measure to make sure the roots can't find their way in that joint .

Nothing left but to back fill 

 

Push the black polyethylene pipe another 4 feet down to the street and tie it in to the sump pump pipe with a rubber collar . 

 Now the maple tree roots can go in the clay tile all they want to but wont as there is no water in there , and we have an unobstructed run for the sump pump to push ground water out to the storm drains in the street .