Beware the woodpeckers (and not for the reason you think)

A woodpecker in a tree, where it belongs.

Over the past year we have been dealing with slow drains in the bathroom sinks in our bedroom’s attached bathroom. The rest of the house’s plumbing has been working just fine. Years ago I had a drain slow down in one of the sinks and it was pretty easily resolved with some vigorous plunging. This time was a little different. And yes, this story involves woodpeckers.

I am not exactly sure when we started to notice the issue, but earlier this year is safe to say. We tried plunging and brought up very little. We tried, several times, boiling hot water. We tried home made recipes we found on the internet for loosing clogs. I finally broke down and bought a commercial clog remover from Jack’s Valley Store. This gave us some relief the first time, for a day or so. So I bought another bottle and this time it didn’t help at all.

At this point, we sort of gave up and started to work around the problem. We were both too busy with other things - work, the vineyard, my getting in enough biking to be fit enough to guide at the Ibis event in August, Van wanting to catch as much fish as possible. We just started to ignore the problem, as best we could.

Finally, the week after I finished the Ibis event, we talked again about the problem. I said we both needed to focus on fixing this issue. Van pulled out the plunger and really worked hard - and this time he got somewhere. This time he pulled up an acorn.

How did an acorn get into the drain pipe of our bathroom sinks? Inconceivable that it would get there from inside the house, Van decided to go up on the roof. And there, open to the sky and all the woodpeckers, was the drain pipe. We have woodpeckers who have stuffed every crevice in the roof vents with acorns; apparently when they ran out of room there, they started dropping them in the roof vent. At this point, we turned to Google and looked up acorns in drain pipes. And yes, you will find some disturbing (to a home owner) videos of plumbers dealing with pipes filled with acorns. And the remedy? Cut holes in the walls and cut into the pipes to get access to the acorns to get them out.

Van decided to try to break up the acorns first with a plumbing snake. This resulted in two or three broken snakes. Finally, he decided to try to break them up with the chimney sweep rod but this didn’t work well. We then had the contractor, Greg Hoyt, come out to help us identify where the plumbing was located so we would know where to cut. In the meantime, Van created a tool that would attached to the acorns, a sharp end that pushed into them and then he could pull them out. He pulled out a lot of acorns. He kept at this for a long time and during this time we stopped using the sinks entirely, trying to give time for whatever water was in there to find it’s way down and for the acorns to dry out a little. He pulled up a lot of acorns, feet of acorns - the height of the wall from our sinks to the roof is at least 10’ and the acorns were 5’ from the top of the vent when he started. By the time we were finished, he estimates there was about 7’ of acorns.

Some of the acorns removed from the drain pipe.

Water on the floor of the garage from the hole in the pipe.

Finally, we got to the bottom of the pipe, to the level that would be below our sinks; this is the same spot as a point in the ceiling of our garage. This is where we knew we might have to cut into the dry wall to access the plumbing. Up to this point, though, Van was pulling a lot of acorns out from the top, so we were hopeful the cutting would be unnecessary. Until the point when he got too vigorous with his tool and pushed all the way through the pipe. I went to go listen to the pounding sound to determine where he was and when I walked into the garage water was dripping out of the light fixtures - not a good sign!

The hole in the pipe and the garage ceiling.

Preparing to cut.

At this point, the sawzall was required. Van knew, thanks to Greg Hoyt, the approximate location of the plumbing. So in he went and soon we found the pipe with the hole. I have to say at this point, what was already a fairly disgusting task (wet, stinky acorns) became truly gross. Van had to cut a big enough rectangle in the ceiling to work with, pull out the sodden insulation, then cut the pipe. Once the pipe was cut, we were really able to access the acorns and all the wet mess that came along. Several of them had grown roots!

Acorns, dry wall and insulation. Some of the acorns have roots!

With better access to the pipes, we were able to get even more acorns out until at last we could put a hose into the pipe and hear the water drain all the way across the ceiling to the wall where it then headed down to the main septic line. I have no doubt if we opened up the septic tank we would find a lot of acorns! Once the immense clog was cleared, the next step was repairing the pipe. This looked like another difficult problem, but in fact it was easier than we expected and in not too long a time we were again able to use our bathroom sinks normally. The last part of the project was to put downward facing elbows on the three roof vents that were not otherwise covered to prevent a similar problem in the future.

All of this happened in August, almost two months ago. Still today when I can run water in the sink for more than 10 seconds and not have it start to fill the basin I am grateful that Van discovered the problem and then fixed it. We still have the small rectangular hole in the garage ceiling; it will get covered with a door of some type so we can always access that elbow in the future. It’s not an experience I hope to have again and it’s a lesson to everyone to take a minute and make sure their roof vents are covered in such a way that air can flow but nothing else can get in.

Some of the acorns from the pipe.