zappaisuikan souji

Yesterday (Sunday) was the day that our apartment building's pipes got cleaned and we had to be home between 13:00 and 15:00.

This procedure is called zappaisuikan souji in Japanese (zappaisuikan are the pipes and souji means to clean)

Apparently if your building is 30+ years old, the pipes should be cleaned to prevent back-ups.

The cleaners started from the bottom floors and worked their way up to the top floors.

Before they clean, certain areas should be cleared...

The area where the washer's drain is.

Under the bathroom sink.

Under the kitchen sink.

As well as the bath/shower area (no photo).

So in the morning, I moved everything just in case they needed to open things up.

I didn't actually see what the guy was doing but think that he "flooded" the drain and checked to see how it "drained".

The internet showed that if it was a slow drain they would use a high powered waterstream to "flush" out the calcified areas.

Luckily our apartment only took 5 minutes and they didn't have to open any of the drains.

Amazed that this little generator did all the work for our building.

It was our first time to experience this so I was surprised that our building management did projects like this.

In a couple of weeks the building management will change all the fire alarms in the apartments.

I was also surprised that the building management kept track of who already did this because Satoshi got our apartment's alarms changed last year while I was in Hawaii (this was one of our facetime calls, I had to tell him that the fire alarm was telling him the battery needed to be changed), so we don't have to be at home on this particular day...whoo! (not that we have been going anywhere though...)

We have one more day of this Silver Week holiday but Satoshi needs to go to work, so it will be a regular day for us.

Hope you have a safe week!