I'm renting a place. The past two or so months I've been have WAM sessions with a friend. Basically cool whip pies and cake batter as "slime" in my shower. I'll put paper towels down to absorb most of the mess and to throw in a trash bag. Then I scrub more off. While some cake batter and cool whip goes down the drain it's not a massive amount.

I've used draino a handful of times and the version of draino I have is advertised as not damaging pipes. Anyways, this past month my water bill was literally 10x higher than it's normal. There was an issue with a toilet I had in another bathroom that *think* is unrelated. Landlord is sending a plumber out to identify the problem.

Are WAM sessions known to ruin pipes? Did it cause my water bill to skyrocket by breaking something I can't see? Will my landlord find out there's been dessert food going into the drain? Help I'm freaking out a little.

Hi,

I don't know your location, so any information may not apply, but as a homeowner in the United States (Virginia):

Water bills are based on water that passes through their meter. What I mean by that is once the water leaves city pipes and enters your residential pipes, you become responsible for the water.

Now, your locality may charge sewage separately, or together. Sewage is the removal of water through plumbing, as in watering your garden would effect water, but not sewage.

Now, if you have a busted inbound pipe, that would effect your water bill. I'm not sure how, or if, a busted outbound pipe would effect it. I think (speculation) if you use your tub, shower, sink, or other disposal drain on a regular basis, water would wash away any foodstuff that might have clung to the pipe. Outbound pipes, IMHO, would only be a problem above ground, in that there's a pipe leaking water into a dark, damp, and unventilated area. That's a recipe for disaster. But I wouldn't expect that to be reflected in a water bill. That's a home maintenance bill.

I don't see why a plumber would inspect an outbound pipe for high water. Outbound water is often treated before reentering the water cycle.

I find it more likely that a pipe busted in spite of, not because of, your wamming activities.

TL;DR: It may have been an inbound pipe that burst coincidentally with WAM, not because of it. Correlation does not mean Causation.

Monitor your water meter for a few days. Extrapolate that to a month of water usage and see if it lines up with with your normal water bill usage or a major leak.

The only reason WAM sessions would increase your water bill is if you use lots of water cleaning up, vastly more than you'd usually use. Basically your water bill is for the amount of clean water that has flowed into your property, and nothing affecting the drains should have any effect on that.

There are some designs of toilet cystern (ironically ones intended to use less water) that, if the seals leak, then waste huge amounts of water by a steady trickle into the toilet bowl. Usually you can detect this by examining the water in the bowl after a flush - if there's a steady vibration on the surface of the water then the cistern seals are probably leaking and that'll be the cause of your bill increase.

I do always recommend that anyone wamming in a bathroom or similar should flush large amounts of water through the drains afterwards to ensure all traces are flushed clear, but unless you're leaving taps running for days that's unlikely to cuse a 10x bill increase.

I think if there was a diploma course in WAM plumbing would have to be a module.

I'm guessing there are no blockages in your outlet pipes? Your concern is regarding your supply pipes? Then as others have suggested - no, you haven't ruined them.

As DMOne suggests it will almost certainly be increased water use. Washing off people and the shower, basin, bath and things like containers and buckets (and clothes and towels in the washing machine) uses exponentially more water than normal ablutions. More than you probably imagine.

If you suspect it is an incoming leak then this will be absolutely unrelated to WAMming and not involve an inspection of your outlet and soil pipes.

If you can get to your meter, see how it looks when all your taps are turned off, cisterns and tanks filled. If it's moving, then there is possibly a coincidental leak or an overflowing storage tank or toilet cistern.

Let us know the outcome. I personally think it's extra usage.

I am pretty sure that your 10x increase in your water bill has absolutely nothing to do with your wam activities. I have had to call out plumbers on several occasion due to my models washing down themselves in my shower and then flushing extra stuff down the toilet and in every case where we abused our drain with wam ingredients this never caused a breakage in my pipes or an increase in my water bill -- it only caused a blockage in my pipes and this created a backup and some minor flooding, not a water bill increase. The biggest problem was generally caused by my models attempting to flush paper towels and entire toilet rolls down the toilet. One model I had used to do this repeatedly over the years, and I even bought her a talking toilet bowl toy as as joke and presented it to her, because almost every time she attended my shoots I had to call out a plumber to unblock the toilet. I used to post notices on my bathroom wall for the models "please do not flush paper towels and entire toilet rolls down the toilet."

When the models showered off wam substances, this never created a problem...e.g. naturalsol (slime) turns to plain soap when you shower it off, same thing with most other food products like chocolate sauce and maple syrup, it all dissolves to nothing in water, and almost everything we use in our wam scenes is biodegradable and not a problem to flush with water down the drains.

The notorious H.H Holmes, America's most prolific serial killer in the 1880's had no problem chopping up a couple hundred bodies and flushing them down the plumbing system of his custom built hotel (which he custom designed to function like an abattoir). I don't think he ever had a problem with his water bill ....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Holmes

Seriously, the only time I have ever seen a significant increase in my water bill, where it increased by 3 times normal, was when I had an underground pipe break in the sprinkler system in my garden, and that was easy to detect because my garden suddenly became a muddy marsh in the broken pipe area, so that is the first place I would look for broken pipes ... look in your garden or street for puddles that occur when there is no rain.

But none of this is your fault or caused by wam. This is your landlord's problem, and don't worry that the plumber is going to find wam substances in your drains. They won't because it all dissolves to mush in water, e.g. whipped cream and most cream pies dissolve in water as well. It took the cops more than 7 years before they discovered all the body parts that serial killers Fred and Rose West flushed down their drains....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_West

The only time I got busted for having wam substances in unusual places, was when were were shooting a pie fight out in the street by my front gates, and I had mailbox at the bottom of my driveway by my gates, and during the pie fight one of the pies went astray and accidentally hit my mail box and there was bits of cream pie left inside my mail box, and I forgot to clean it all up. The next day the postman was delivering my mail and when he put his hand inside my mail box he ended up with cream pie on his hands, and then he queried me about why I had cream pie inside my mail box.

Mark:

Let's face it, this is 'Merca!

And the mail box thing is right out the "Battle of the Century.