Our nightmare

86/365
This is a dark, wet corner of the basement here. In the middle of the night (March 28/29) we awoke to the sound of water, and not the record rainfall happening outside. It was rushing out of the drain of the sink in the basement. It was a long night and day of waiting for plumbers and hauling buckets of nastiness up the stairs and out to the street in the downpour. The gutters feed into the waste water line here, so the heavy rain supplied a steady flow of water to mix with the house waste water and flood the basement. We learned the value of a submersible pump.

"What caused this mess?" you might ask. That pile that looks like rags is the culprit. The second plumber (don't ask) got a massive amount of baby wipes out of the drain. Apparently the neighbors were using wipes that are labeled as flushable, and using a lot of them. The plumber said it was one of the largest amounts of junk he's gotten out of a drain. These things are thicker than paper towels, and according to the plumber, excellent drain cloggers.