We received a call yesterday that was odd, even by our standards. The other strange part is that it was the second call in two days about the same issue. The homeowner noticed a bad smell coming from the shower and sink drains in her home in multiple locations. Moreover, there was a gurgling noise coming from the drains when the toilet flushed or when the other fixtures were used. The smell was so bad these poor people had to leave their homes. It was the smell of raw sewage, which ranks up there with the rankest of rank. Bummer indeed.

We sent one of our guys over there at 8pm in the dark to fix the issue because we felt so bad for these people. They had kids and the whole family was living at Grandpa’s house until the smell was figured out.  Usually snow that falls on top of PVC plumbing vents just falls in and melts somewhere inside the system. In this case it piled up and formed a solid chunk of ice that completely blocked the pipe. We used a heat gun to quickly dislodge the ice and the problem was solved. We still can not figure out why this happened in the first place. Theoretically this could happen on every home in Minnesota but it doesn’t. We will be puzzling over this case for a while.