Water Whooos

I have not had a very good start to my year when it comes to my house. First, I had issues with my heat pump, AGAIN. I got an outrage electrical bill in December - almost as bad as the bill from last year. So, my immediate thoughts were that something is wrong with my heat pump again. After numerous phone calls to my home warranty company (shopping around for a different one this year) and numerous house calls from a heating & air conditioning company - turns out the HWC screwed me and I'm stuck with crazy electric bills.

What happened it that technically the warranty company created a mis-matched unit in my house. The indoor portion of the heat pump is a 10 SEER unit and the outside unit that was replaced last January is a 13 SEER unit. IF the units were matching the 13 SEER system would be much more energy efficient, but they didn't. Instead they replaced the outside unit with a PAYNE, which is turning out to be a Pain-in-the-ass or rather wallet, and the installed some little gadget to the inside unit that lets the warranty companies get away with creating a mismatched unit and sky-rockets my bills.

So, I bought myself a Delonghi oil-filled space heater. I put that in my bedroom and I still have one of those blowing space heaters which is in my computer room. The thermostat now stays on 60 and the space heater generates enough heats to warm up the upper floor of my house. So when I am home in the evening, I pretty much live upstairs. Hopefully the January will be a LOT less for me efforts.

OK, so I had my upset for the year right off the bat - so I thought. Sunday I was doing laundry and when I went downstairs to change out the loads this is what I encountered:



The culpret was that toilet in the basement. Apparently there was a clog in the main line of the house and all the water that was draining from house hit the blockage and then came back up from the toilet and all over the basement floor. I lost it. All I saw were the dollar signs it was going to cost me to fix this and knowing I just didn't have it right now. The one thing I am grateful for is that it was sewage that came up through the toilet! Thanks goodness for small favors I suppose.

This was like the straw that broke the camels back. I just lost it that morning. So after I cried out all my frustrations and got myself semi-together, I called my sister for help. I called the county first to see if the blockage was on their end. I prayed that it was! From there I called my insurance company, who inturn called a cleaning company to come out and clean up the water in my basement. County called me back and basically said "Nope. Not our problem." Soooooooooo, the plumber came out on Monday and snaked the main line. Nothing really seemed to be caught to create a blockage, but the toilet now seems to be flushing without incident. The plumber isn't sure what happened. " Could be rooted damaged the pipes." He said, "If this happens again he'll snake a camera down to see what is going on and to start saving money because I may need to install new drainage pipes." *WHAT?!?!?*

Can I catch a break.... PLEASE!