Sometimes things just work – Other times… Well, lets ignore them for the moment. I mentioned earlier that I was having some plumbing problems – the downstairs laundry was well and truely blocked. I knew things were bad when I found the sewer inspection hole. This probably took a good 15 minutes since it was underneith a concrete path and buried. I forgot the inspection hole was there even though I had installed it. But it was not in the right place. Argh.

I needed to get into the join between the plastic sewer pipe and the ceramic pipe under the house. Thankfully a couple of years back I bought a ‘Rotary Hammer Drill’. Normally a hammer drill hits the entire chuck so the bearings tend to fail and the drill cannot hit the end too hard with the hammer. With a rotary hammer drill, ball bearings are used to allow the shaft of the drill bit to go in and out with the hammer action whilst the chuck turns the bit. This allows a heap more power to be available on the hammer action. It also allows you to turn off the rotating action and you have a small jack hammer.

It is this jack hammer that I was able to use to remove the concrete from around the pipes. And rather than spend a few hours and probably damaging the ceramic pipe, it took probably 3 or 4 minutes to clean away the concrete, and break into the pipe. Then I shoved the hose into the blocked pipe, and it did not want to go in. Then rubish started coming out. The blockage was right at the join between the two pipes. And it seems that the blockage is now cleared. And what I thought would take the best part of a day took under an hour.

As I said, sometimes things just work.