Sink Problems

You know how it is. Yesterday I had planned all sorts of tasks to do, but when I reentered the kitchen the kitten had upended a plant pot from the shelf above the sink and the mangled seedling and the potful of compost were dumped in the sink. Now our kitchen sink, as you can see above, isn't the most modern of equipment, yet it is an improvement on what was there beforehand. This would have been a stone basin installed in a recess, with a round porthole window above. The earlier sink's waste pipe debauched through a short pipe into the gutter, allowing the water to run away down the road as was the norm in rural France. The 'new' sink was simply installed on top of the stone one, and its waste  discharged into it. All this I have more fully realised as a result of this little accident. I cleared up the majority of the soil, but didn't worry about flushing the rest down the plug hole as this compost wouldn't be objectionable. We normally wash up in a bowl and carry any dirty water through to the bathroom, adding it to our septic tank by flushing it down the loo.
  However, my action did have a consequence on this occasion, as it blocked the sink. The stone sink underneath overflowed, and water poured out of the cupboard under the sink.
  Unfortunately, my usual standby of a sink plunger didn't work, as there was no connection between the two waste pipes. The wire from a coat hanger, my second standby also failed, the more so as the top sink's waste turned out not to be opposite the hole underneath....it was time to call in a snake.
   A snake is what plumbers call the long length of coiled spring you feed down the plug hole to clear it when the caustic soda fails. Unfortunately, I didn't have one but Weldom supplied this very posh version at 22Euros. Scarcely had I fed the end of this up from the bottom of the waste pipe when a gush of muddy water showed the money had been well spent. All's well that ends well and I shall surely find the tool useful in future blockages.

  Bye for now, pet feeding time!