[masraum]

OK, I bit the bullet. I really didn't want to crawl under the house. It had some seriously black, sticky mud/dirt. It was probably only 8-12 feet from the entrance. I did what I said, telescoping PVC, hole drilled through both with a bent nail through. The bigger pipe's end was cut in a V (like a mouth, not a spear). When I pulled the cap, a little bit of toilet paper and water came out but not much, a cup or two. Then I rammed the ram home. It went most of the way in and then jammed. I gave it a few good whacks and it went the rest of the way through. I screwed the cap on and came inside. I've run the sinks (no more glugging noise in drains) and flushed the toilet several times. Things seem to be working again.

It felt like a hard obstruction, not a soft one like I imagined roots would have felt. I left the ram down there. It was a pain in the ass to weave through all of the piers, and I was just ready to back my ass up outta there.

I think there was 15-18' of pipe from the clean out to the septic. I think I had 13-15' of PVC as a ram rod. I ran the ram rod to the hilt into the clean-out. I figure if that didn't work, I would always pull the lid off of the septic again and go in from the other end. Fortunately, I didn't need to do that.

Hell, it's entirely possible that the 2 year old flushed a hot wheels down the toilet. I'm not going to go dredging the septic to find out what it was.

I will look into getting a baffle installed.