The morning the Brown family was packing up to leave for Mexico, Cathy Brown Brown and her husband discovered they had a problem, a nasty sewage problem.
The owners of Valpo Velvet Ice Cream found their already twice-worked on sewer pipes were once again backing up, but this time the problem was beyond a simple fix.
So, when they returned home, after keeping the damage at bay while they were on vacation, they called Jack Hines of Hines Plumbing, her go-to plumber.
“I trust Jack with my plumbing disasters, fiascos, and tragedies,” she said. “So, I talked to Jack when I got back and helped us through it.”
Hines has come out both times the Brown’s sewage pipes underneath the foundation of their Valpo-based home were backed up in the past. When it recently happened again about a month ago, Hines came back out with his camera and found there was another blockage as well as some of the pipes had busted and broken down.
So, with the help of Hines and his crew, the Brown family had to dig up the concrete, repair and replace the pipes, then laid new concrete back down. The entire process took up about two weeks.
“It was a combination of all of us. Jack came out and helped out my husband and then we did some on our own, so it was a group effort,” she said.
Hines lent them the equipment and checked up on the progress too.When something like that happens, there is nothing fun about it. The work, the expense, the time spent on it – no fun, she said. But, what made it tolerable was the help of a friend.
“It ended up being “fun” because I like working with people I trust,” Brown said. “That makes things like that go a lot smoother since you know you’re in it with someone you can trust.”
The ability to rely on your business neighbors is just one of the many positive attributes of why Brown loves having her home and ice cream shop in Valpo.
“It is nice to have a neighbor, friend, co-business owner to call and help you,” she said.
“I have lot of respect for plumbers for what they have done in our house,” she added in. “They have tough jobs, shitty jobs, no pun intended.”
For more information on what Hines Plumbing can do for you, click here.