-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Bresci
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 2:42 PM
To:
Subject: RE: Frozen pecker
Well it goes a little something like this....
Back in October we were replacing the shingles on Jimmy's roof (side note: we never finished. There are about 6 stacks of shingles still up there). As you may or may not know, you need to use roofing caulk to seal up the edges around the roof under the shingles. So Jimmy's up there working and he has this tube of caulk that keeps rolling down the roof and getting in his way. Jimmy gets pissed off pretty easily, so he fires a few f-bombs and sticks the tube of caulk in the closest convenient location he can think of... On top of an air vent. He later explained to me that he was under the impression that the vent would be at least a quarter inch narrower than the diameter of the tube of caulk. Apparently, it's a quarter inch larger. Jimmy, by the way, is a licensed contractor.
So... Fooom! The tube of caulk goes shooting down this air vent into who knows where. At this point Jimmy unleashes a stream of epithets reminiscent of the dad in "A Christmas Story." Anyway, after regrouping we decide that we need to resolve this issue ASAP. This is where the combined clever genius of Dave and Jimmy comes into play. The first thing we tried was lowering a string line attached to a weighted film canister with crazy glue on the bottom, letting it rest on the tube of caulk (which was about 12-15 feet down) and letting the glue dry so we could pull it out. Needless to say, this didn't work. We tried the same thing except substituted the crazy glue with Liquid Nails, which is some bad-ass shit. Negative. At this point one of our neighbors, Jay, comes by, sees us on the roof and asks what we're up to. Jimmy tells him what happened, and after Jay stops laughing he offers to help. He works for the power company, he's on his lunch break, and he has a big truck full of bad-ass tools. So he and his partner climb up on the roof with this giant spool of what looks like copper wiring, maybe about an eighth of an inch thick. He cuts off about 15 feet of it, winds one end so it looks like a corkscrew, and proceeds to spend the next 20 minutes trying to screw his way through the bottom of the tube of caulk with this copper wire. Unsuccessfully, of course.
That night we discover what the air vent was used for, which was for intake to the bathroom sink and the laundry room. At this point we have no running water in either spot.
The next day I had this genius idea that I would attach a screwdriver with duct tape to the end of a 20 foot section of PVC, then try to puncture the bottom of the tube of caulk in order to then twist and pull it up. I still think this might've worked if maybe I'd used a bit more duct tape. As it happened, I punched my makeshift PVC spear down into the abyss only to have it come back up without the screwdriver. Time for drastic measures. We rip the sink and the vanity out of the bathroom so we can get to the wall which cointains said air vent. We saw through the drywall until we have access to the pipes, then saw through what looks like the correct pipe. We were right, it's the pipe with the stuck tube. Unfortunately, the tube seems to be about a foot below floor level as best we can tell since we can't really see. Turns out I probably shoved it down another few feet with my PVC contraption.
Anyhow, we got busy with work and didn't get around to calling Roto-Rooter until about a week after the original incident. The guy comes out and looks at this hole in the wall with a section cut out of an air vent, then goes back to his truck to get one of those cameras they have. He pokes around in there for about five minutes, then tells me that there's nothing he can do because it looks like the tube opened up and the caulk dried inside the tube. He says the only thing we can do at this point is bust through the concrete floor, dig out to the bottom of the pipe and replace it where the problem resides. It's not as hard as it sounds, he says. Then he charged me 85 bucks.
The next day I go to an equipment rental place to get a concrete saw, which is a bad ass piece of equipment if you've never seen one. We cover the entrance to the bathroom with plastic and Jimmy jury-rigs a sort of a ventilator using a shop-vac and some PVC because the bathroom has no windows and, therefore, no ventilation. We split the duties this way: he does the cutting and I stay in the hallway to make sure the plastic covering stays sealed so cement dust doesn't go flying everywhere. So Jimmy gets geared up with goggles and a big ventilator mask and goes in to make his first cut. He's gonna cut out a big rectangle and cutting through concrete is fairly slow. After about five minutes he comes out of the bathroom covered in sweat and dust and says he made the first cut. He rests for a few minutes then goes back in there for the second cut. The same thing again for the third cut. When he's in there for the fourth cut he seems to be taking a little longer than usual. He finally comes out, pouring sweat, and stumbles down the hallway through the living room out to the front yard. Now, all I can see from the hall is the doorway, so I see him go to the left of the door, then stumble across the doorway off to the right, then come back in the house an plop down on the recliner. I go up to him and see that he is soaking with sweat and that his eyelids are twitching, so I start asking him "Are you ok? Are you ok?" He doesn't say anything and his breathing starts to turn to snoring and it looks to me like he's passed out. I grab the cordless phone and yell at him, "Dude I’m going to call 911!" He opens his eyes halfway and slurs "What for?" I lift him up with one arm over my shoulder and take him out to the front yard where he lies for about fifteen minutes in a semi-catatonic state, occasionally reviving himself for a drink of water. I went back into the bathroom and discovered that I couldn't see two inches in front of me from the cement dust and that it was about 120 degrees in there. So he either had poisoning from the dust or he overheated or both.
After the dust settles I decide to take a sledgehammer and try to crack through the cut floor. After about 15 minutes of sporadic hammering, I've probably got about 4 square inches cracked off the slab. Jimmy's in no shape to take over, so we decide to return the saw and rent a jackhammer. It takes about half an hour but I finally break up the 2x3 foot section under which we're going to dig. By the way, using a jackhammer is not as cool as it sounds. It's fun for about two minutes until your arms start to get sore. Then it just really sucks.
After we cut through the wiring (because lucky for us it was reinforced concrete) we decided to call it a day. We didn't get around to digging out the dirt for another couple of weeks, and by that time I'd gotten used to doing everything in the kitchen sink. Anyhow, I dug through the dirt to get to the pipe and when we cut it out we found the fucking screwdriver was sticking through the bottom of the pipe.
So that's how a tube of caulk cost Jimmy about 500 bucks. And we still don't have a sink in the bathroom.
-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 12:50 PM
To: Dave Bresci
Subject: RE: Frozen pecker
Nice, a poopcicle. I hadn't heard about the caulk incident, what's that all about.
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Bresci
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 12:43 PM
To:
Subject: Frozen pecker
So Jimmy just finished painting the bathroom the other day and gets a wild hair up his ass about tiling the floor. As you probably know, we've been without a sink in the bathroom for three months because of the tube of caulk incident, so he'd have to tile the floor anyway before we put a new sink in.
Of course, in order to tile the floor we have to remove the toilet, which was done last night. So the tiling goes pretty smoothly, after which we both realize that it's going to take at least twelve hours for the mortar to dry before we can replace the toilet. Last night the temperature in Bend was 1, with a wind chill factor of -12. Needless to say, I've been taking a leak in a one gallon water bottle for the last day. Dropping a deuce presented a slightly larger problem... I drove to Costco this morning to use their can. Jimmy, on the other hand, in his words "went from Defcon 1 to Defcon 5 in about three minutes" and ended up taking a dump in the garage in the 5 gallon bucket he used to mix the mortar yesterday. He said he couldn't believe the amount of steam coming out of that bucket after he took it outside.
I love this place.
