Sarah sighed. “Okay. Teach me how to fix it. Permanently.”
Her husband, Mike, grabbed the shop vac. “It’s the drain pipe,” he said. “It’s clogged with ten years of sock fuzz and regret.”
First, Mike yanked the washer’s power cord from the wall. “Water and electricity are not friends,” he reminded her. Then, they pulled the machine away from the wall, revealing the coiled, corrugated drain hose snaking into a standpipe—a vertical PVC pipe in the wall.
With the snake removed, Mike poured a kettle of boiling water down the standpipe. It drained with a clean, happy whoosh . He reinserted the drain hose, secured it with a zip tie, and pushed the washer back.
“Not again,” she whispered, stepping back from the spreading puddle.
Sarah slid a low-profile bucket under the connection point. She carefully pulled the drain hose out of the standpipe. A few cups of stagnant, dark water dribbled out. It smelled exactly like a wet swamp monster. “Gloves were a good call,” she admitted.