Sewage backed up into house

[Chuck H.]

I thought I'd share what happened to me last night. Get a call from a great tenant (never calls, always pays on time, keeps house spotless). He says water is backing up through the toilet wax ring/flange. It had been pouring here for several hours and I suspected the city sewer was overwhelmed. I had heard of this happening during Hurricane Harvey.

I call a plumber (it's 8p) to talk through some options. He says there's not much you can do except open the outside clean out to relieve the pressure and wait out the storm. I tell that to the tenant and he said he'd look for the clean out, but it's now backing up through the tub and shower.

He didn't have a shop vac and was using towels to stop the bleeding so I decide to go over there. It smelled horrible. I gave him the shop vac to go to work while I head out back in the storm to look for the clean out. Everything was under water, but there was an area that clearly was sewage. I waded around in week old take out, poked around the ground with a stick and found the clean out. I stuck a rod down as far as I could put it and it started bubbling up. Apparently the cap was already off, but it was clogged.

The sewage inside started to go down. I called the city emergency line and explained what happened. They came out to investigate and said their main lines were "overcharged" and we'd just have to wait out the storm.

Did a little research this morning and found a device called a backwater valve to prevent this from happening again. Called the city again and they said they were cleaning out their main lines. I told them about the backwater valve and convinced them to install it at their cost so that was a small win.

Anyway, I know this could have been A LOT worse. Tenant was great throughout the whole ordeal and was a big help cleaning up inside while I tried to work a solution. Just added a little more plumbing experience to my belt.