Story Time

I have a good friend who will be moving soon from our fair city to a city up north. I worked with her at my previous employer. She has been a stand up sort of person, one that is a great example of a friend, co worker and all around fun fun gal. I will miss her. I really wanted to work with her again, but she has a fabulous new job in the city where she will be moving and someone else will get an opportunity to make a new friend and she will make an impact in a new place. Rock On Heather!

And that is the intro into a new property management story. It never seems to end, and while there are a lot of stories that are the same, some just have a funny way of becoming a work order. This is one of them. Now I will have to put in a disclaimer, because this is about sewage.

Since the '90's California passed a low flow law, starting with toilets. Yes, water is very expensive and I will do my best to try to conserve water. I am only one person and will not assume anyone's lack of conservation, so there. I have a low water use dishwasher, wash full loads of clothes in my not water conservative washing machine, my yard is mostly brown, and we have flow restriction faucet flow adapters. The one thing I won't replace is my toilet. And here is the reason why, they don't work. I've had plumbers tell me that this has been a boon to the plumbing business and it's true. Most often, we get calls from tenants that the toilet is clogged. And they really are. I've explained to them it we pull out hair, dental floss, wipes or paper towels, they will be charged for the call. Usually we don't pull any of that out, it's all ....waste.

Today I had to tell a gal from Russia that her low flow toilet can't handle the amount of waste that goes into her toilet. I've had to delicately say, flush early and flush often, inch-pinch and flush and basically tell them to waste water. I can only imagine what she must think of me. I told her to keep a bucket of water next to the toilet and use that to flush large amounts down the sewer. How polite can this topic be? I can tell you, this particular toilet was one of the first of the low flow and the correct term for this toilet has been No flow. Ah, bureaucracy at it's best. I wonder if some of the laws were enacted and supported by plumbers united.

El Fin.