The Smell Is Oh So Special

Now I have been having so much fun with the car wash for the past two months.  The sumps have all started backing up, at first it was one at a time then the whole thing started acting up.  In fact, in the month of December I have cleared clogs five times.

Now I have explained how much I enjoy working on the sumps with the smell, the slime, the smell, and the smell. In fact last Sunday I had the extra fun of teaching Andrew how to clear a clog.  What bothered me on Sunday was the fact that that it was the second time for the Auto bay to clog up in three days. Things were going from bad to worse for the drainage system.  That Monday I called American Sanitation and tried to set an appointment to get the sumps clean.  The answer was “Well maybe, we can get there by Thursday!” I heard myself saying “That’s cool we get it done when we can” While my brain was exploding in my skull and leaking out my ears. Luckily we did not Back up in any of the stalls for the rest of the week.  We did not get the cleanout done till Friday, but boy did those guys earn their pay.  Two guys show up early Friday morning with a large empty Tanker and started cleaning out the manual bays

 

These guys worked through the wind, the temperature, and the smell. I never realized just how much crap comes off cars, trucks, and whatever else that fits into a wash bay.

 

Once a bay was clean they opened it up to the customers and moved on to the next, at least for the first four bays.  That’s when they realized that our bays were so full that their tanker truck would not hold all the crap.  They had to leave and dump their tank and come back for the last three bays. 

 

The last surprise was when they started working on the main sump.  We found that there was a major clog somewhere in a two foot section of pipe that was deeper in the crap soup than anyone could or wanted to try to reach. (That included me).  This is when the manager came up with the idea of building up some pressure in the tanker then hit that clog with all that pressure at once. This sucked the clog out faster than anything.  Think of a giant plunger and you might get an idea of the sound that clog made coming out.  Now what was in that clog?  well no one will ever know.  I like to think it was something dead.

 

All and all it was well worth all the trouble to get the car wash back up and running.

Todays Fun

I noticed yesterday that the water level in the sump of bay four was kind of high.  Well today it was within an inch of overflowing so I guess it was time to do something.

 

Unfortunately, I know what that entails, me grabbing the shovel and finding the clog.  So I spent most of the morning digging through some of the most disgusting muck.  Now when it comes to muck I know my muck.  Back in California I have had many sewer moments. In fact I may have to tell those stories at another time. For now please accept the fact that I am an expert in the field of disgusting muck and when I say that the odor that came off of this decomposing pile of putrid slime was special, then it really was.

After about an hour I found the drain hole and as expected it was clogged.  Now I need to know how bad,  bad is. To do this I am going to stick my hand down there and feel around.  Who here remembers the scene in the first Star Wars movie ( I do mean the first one made not the crap they tried to pass off years latter) When the heroes are stuck in the trash compactor.  For some reason every time I stuck my hand into the slime I kept thinking of Luke. 

Two hours now have gone by and I can reach no further.  So back to the office I go to clean up and come up with plan “B”.  Unfortunately the only thing I got left is calling in a company to clean out the sumps and that is going to cost a pretty penny. While I am in the office My good buddy and friend Dave Liszeski Stops by to say hi. I should mention that besides being a great guy, District Commissioner of the Boy Scouts, and one of the guys voted not able to post my bail because he is in jail with me…..he is also a plumber extraordinaire. 

He never went out to the sump, he just listed to my ranting  and says “ I got what you need” and he goes out to his truck and brings back this,

 

This is a homemade pipe rooter of his own creation. Just hook it to a hose, stick it into the pipe, and turn on the water.

 

So I did. With the help of John who came in at 1:00 today, I followed Dave’s instructions and inside of three minutes that pipe was clear and the water was draining like it should.

 

 

A happy Bob once again……a smelly Bob, yes, but a happy Bob never the less.

The truth of dead people and storage

Someone once told me that every manager who stay in the game long enough will get one dead body. I don’t know what it says about me but I have had two.

The story of the first dead body-

Some time around 1995 I was working as the onsite maintenance at Space Bank in Pasadena. A wonderful facility 8.5 acres of old Navy base. As the summer started heating up the smell of dead rodent started getting pretty strong in the “W” building and as maintenance I started the hunt. From time to time a mouse will get into a unit so we kept a really potent poison in the ceiling. The mice go after the bate and die quite quickly. The poison dehydrates the rodent and you end up with a mummified Mickey that stops smelling.

As soon as you smell one you have to find it before the smell stops. With in 5 days I hadn’t found my mouse friend but the strange thing was the smell was getting stronger. I finally got to the point where we started cutting locks to track down the smell.

Three weeks later we have entered every space in that hallway with no luck. The summer temperatures are going up and the smell is getting worse. That is when a little luck solved the mystery.

During the day it was standard procedure to walk the grounds and check doors. On the Mini Storage side of the property we are looking for dummy locked doors and doors without locks. There was a large section of the property that was built into a industrial park. This side was 24 hour access and we didn’t have a need to check doors. Well fortunately or unfortunately one of the weekend crew checked the door to one of the industrial spaces that happened to back up to the building with the “W” hallway. Well the answer to the smell was laying half on a couch half on the floor in front of a space heater.

An industrial tenant who happened to have cancer had overdosed on his pain meds and had passes away in his shop. Why no one had not noticed he was missing can be put down to many reasons, but my belief was he had alienated himself from his family. We would not start looking for him till his rent came do.

Living in L.A. county does make for some interesting meetings. There were two ladies who were on the scene as coroners on the OJ Simpson Double Homicide. One spent a year on television at the trial the other one got to come to Space Bank and help us out. It was this lady who taught me how to get decomposing human out of cement. The secret is kitty litter lots and lots of kitty litter and a strong stomach. It took two weeks and a about 20 lbs of the litter. You lay it out then in the morning scrape it up. Repeat till the litter stays dry. I really hope I never have to do that again.

Scraping human de-comp, can that be put on a resume?