A Plumber’s Worst Nightmare

Being a plumber can be a gratifying job, but it can also be one of the grossest and most horrifying. The things plumbers find on a daily basis are typical but sometimes there are some discoveries that take the cake. We compiled a list of plumber horror stories to make you both laugh and cringe! A Deadly Smell Back in the 1990s, this person was called to attend to a plumbing issue at a funeral home. The plumbing issue was a urinal drain that was backed up. As one can imagine, being in a funeral home is unsettling to begin with but this particular urinal was at the end of a stainless-steel table used to drain the bodies of their fluids before the embalming process. The plumber used a ½” cable to clear the drain, it was the worst thing he had ever smelled or seen in his career. What came out of the drain was hairy black sludge. Between the sludge and smell, the cable had to be replaced which the funeral home happily paid for. The worst part of this story is that he was surrounded by cloaked bodies the entire time. Bare Your Teeth (Or Dentures) One plumber shares that he had a customer with a toilet stoppage. Once at the home, he began looking into the pipes to find the cause and he ended up pulling out upper and lower dentures from the toilet. The customer explained that he had too much to drink the night before and had gotten sick, thus the dentures in the toilet. A Hairy Situation One plumber reminisces on a service call that he and his boss took. They arrived at an old lady’s home and were told that the upstairs shower drain is clogged. The plumbers get to the bathroom and see 2 inches of standing water in the shower. They proceed to ask how long this has been happening and the lady told them 8 months. The two plumbers first grab an automatic lav snake which burns out from the heaviness of the clog. Then they used a big closet snake usually used for toilets to unclog the drain. Using their combined strength, they pull out the biggest hair wad that they claim was the size of a decently big otter. The plumber shared that the smell was the worst smell that has ever existed and that both he and his boss started violently throwing up. The old lady went to see what all the commotion was about. Shocked, she began sobbing. The lady felt awful and made them hot chocolate for their trouble. After 2.5 hours, the plumber regrouped and finished the task, but with masks this time. The moral of the story, collect your hair out of the drain! A Furry Friend Another plumber shared that he went to a house to unclog an upstairs toilet. He ended up clearing the clog by going through the pipes from the roof and to his surprise, he pulled out a dead raccoon from the drain through a 4-inch plumbing vent stack. Raccoons and other creatures tend to find their way into everything, especially plumbing. Frozen in Time We have a story from our very own Creative Marketing Director, Greg Guess, who used to do some plumbing work of his own. His story began at 2 am when he received a call from his boss asking if he wanted to make some extra money. Greg accepted and made his way to a nursing home where a water main had broken. Not only was it the middle of the night, but it was freezing outside. Working in wet conditions, he did a lot of backhoe digging. As he was digging, steam came up from the water, and the dirt was freezing on his equipment. At last, he found the leak and ordered a full circle repair clamp. Because this plumbing disaster occurred overnight, he had the industrial supply shop open up at 3 in the morning to get the supplies he needed. Nonetheless, he fixed the water main and thus heroically saved the nursing home residents from the plumbing disaster. As he said, “All you need to know is that it was a cold, wet, and freezing experience.” “Make It Happen™” Superior Tool® can make your next plumbing job easier. Check out our nifty tools and other plumbing essentials to help you avoid a plumbing disaster like the stories above. Purchase any of our professional tools online or at hardware stores nationwide. The link to all these horror stories can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Plumbing/comments/aess8a/comment/edsw4e0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/g4196/plumber-horror-stories/?slide=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4wnlxr/plumbers_of_reddit_what_are_some_of_the/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/interior-projects/a26202/7-plumbing-horror-stories/