Plumbing ...

[ncboman]

Bath tub drain stopped up.

I suspect 4yr old grandson is behind it. :rolleyes:

Tried the plunger and made a right nice mess but still not draining at all. Went under the house and surveyed the situation ... galvanized pipes. :mad:

I put a pipe wrench on em but it ain gonna be that easy. I just went and found my torch but I'm done for the night.

... which joint to try and take apart first? :rolleyes:

ncboman

[Bayrat]

NC,
For a tub drain, with possably a kid at fault, I'd start at the first bend. Usually, if something can make it past that, it can make it past the others.

Also, check for any low area in the pipe that can acumulate..... whatever.

My last house had an old upstairs bathroom with lead drains for the tub/shower. Over time,they had sagged between floor joists. Soap muck and hair had built up in the low areas.

Occational dose of drain cleaner helped some, but eventually, the only fix was I had to tear down a ceiling and replace with properly pitched plastic.

On to the house I have now. The drunk I bought it from didn't know which end of a drain was suposed to be down. I had to cut and re-glue a couple of drains for an upstairs bathroom.

Believe me, you don't want to live in a house with a city Mall-queen wife, four daughters, and and the only working bathroom has drains pitched wrong. !!!!:rolleyes:

Bayrat

[Bushman]

The worst offender when Sweetness and a daughter lived here were those feminine hygiene things that keep the drain guys in business called "white mice". With old galvanized pipe, use the plunger instead of the drain cleaner. We are replacing pipe with PVC at mom's house now because the drain cleaner ate the pipes too. As a youth, my son put apple cores in the bathroom drain. A long nose hemostat corrected that issue. I was over at my rental property yesterday correcting a washer drain that wound not drain. First time that happened it cost me $80.00 for a service call when the problem area is about 2" inside the pipe. I'm glad I was there to watch him. He said you are going to hate the service call bill for what was such a simple fix.

[M99ER]

Put the wrenches away NOW and rent a small electric snake. Not the flimsy ones either.

Send it in where the lever to stop the drain is located. After you remove 2 screws, the whole assembly will slide out and you can send the snake in that way. If there is a drum trap beneath and you can only get so far, find a cleanout and send the snake in from there.

You can also cut a straight section of pipe beyond the trap and snake in 2 directions then reconnect the pipe ends with what's called a Fernco. It's a rubber tube with hose clamps on each end. Also you can use 'no-hub' couplings. Should be 1-1/2" pipesize.

After you get the drain working somewhat slowly, use a commercial drain cleaner made with sulphuric acid (high concentrate) (Aubuchon, Home Depot etc). This is not the soap-like Draino. It is much stronger and builds heat as it destroys hair and other clogs. Wear gloves and eye protection, it is nasty stuff. Draino and Mr Plumber do not have SA in them for product liabilities.

Oh yeah, open windows too because it stinks bad! But with old galvanized piping, you need something that will open the passages back up beause the interior pipe walls are rough and hang on to everything..

Sometimes it will start a leak but it's the next best thing to replacing the pipes so if it does leak, you just found your new project.

I AM a licensed plumber and I've used the sulphuric acid numerous times. I've been told by my boss and others that it can cause a leak but I've yet to see that happen. On the job and at home.

Get your drain working slow FIRST! Then use it.

[ncboman]

Man I was hoping you'd check in. :D

Here's the deal.

First off, I want to see/salvage what's down the drain. (We're missing some keys. :rolleyes: )

The drain from the tub has a j type trap in the line before it T's into the line coming from the bathroom sink. The sink is currently draining but slower than normal. This tells me the clog is either in the T or the trap, maybe both as they are fairly close.

Last night I put the plunger to the sink drain and that's when crud showed up in the tub. The tub still isn't draining at all. It's half full of water now from my shower this morning.

The pipes are in very good shape, esp considering their age, as we live of sandy land and it's always very dry under there. I'd rather avoid renting a snake and open the pipe myself.

Cutting the pipe and installing a coupling sounds cool as it will be there for future problems, should they arise. I assume I need to take a small section out to make room for the coupling?

heck, I'll go take a pic of it. Be right back. :rolleyes:

ncboman

[ncboman]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v50/ncboman/Plumbing/AlanIsraelAdrienFishingtrip037.jpg

The pipe wrench is between the trap and the T. This is where I should cut the pipe into once I buy a coupling?

The OD of the pies is 2" so I guess that's 1 1/2" pipe.

I've got a call and must leave. I'll check back shortly.

btw, thanks for your help. :)

ncboman

[LampLighter]

If that were me. I would take a sawzall to the down pipe, and again somewhere down stream. I would then replace that section, trap & all, with PVC. Make the transition with a fernco bushing at each end. Wrap a plastic plumbing strap around the trap and nail it to two floor joices. That will take the weight off of the vertical fernco clamp.

[Bill Gunn]

It doesn't look like there is very much, if any pitch to the pipes after the trap. The one on the left even looks like it may be pitched the wrong way, unless that is from pulling on it with the wrench.
Can you shorten the vertical drop on the right to give you more pitch (1/4"/ft) after it's repaired ?
I'd also put a hanger right after that 90* ell, if not one on each side of it.

It may help in the future.

[M99ER]

Cutting the pipe and installing a coupling sounds cool as it will be there for future problems, should they arise. I assume I need to take a small section out to make room for the coupling?


After you cut the pipe you move the two pieces out of line with each other and slide the Fernco over one of them with some dish soap, carwash etc. Realign them and slide the coupling halfway onto the other piece. You may need to remove an inch or so but no more.

Lamplighter has a good idea in that you could cheaply replace lots of that old piping with some PVC. Bill G also spotted a lack of pitch but I don't quite agree with his 'eye'. ') It looks like the sink has about a 1/8th pitch which is legal and acceptable (but not ideal) and the tub has even less pitch around 1/16th (not acceptable nor legal) or so (by the trained eye although I only have the house as a reference).

If that junction is in fact a tee and not a wye, it needs replacing because it will always be a problem spot. Use a PVC wye and a street 45 to provide a smoother turn. While you are replacing some of the pipes, get another wye and a street cleanout with nut and put it upstream of the tee (should be wye) so you can pass a snake later on.

Another alternative to all of this right now and would be an easy attempt to get you going again which is to use a Drain King (http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000190.php) but you'll need to go in via a cleanout or cut the pipe where you'll need a Fernco after the fix. Yes, you have 1-1/2" piping.

One last word of advice for now. Seriously, I mean SERIOUSLY consider borrowing a porta-band saw (tool rental business or friend) to cut the pipes instead of a sawsall. The sawsalls shake the pipe so much they have a bad habit of creating leaks where there were none before. The band saw cuts nice and smoothly without rattling the whole shebang...

The Drain-King will require you to do periodic maintenance like every year or other year but the best thing is to get rid of as much of the galvy piping as possible. That stuff is junk. You can improve the pitch while you're at it too.

A torpedo level is usually 1/8th pitch when the bubble touches the up side line and 1/4th pitch when the bubble gets 'cut' by the line slightly.

Funny thing happened to me once. We called the local inspector to come inspect some piping before burying it and he couldn't come till 1st thing the next morning. Well overnite some of the sand (an @-hole general contractor supervisor) settled because of water being poured (a freakin' HOSE! Grr!) in the dich and reverse pitched one of sections. The inexperienced newly appointed code enforcer looked at the pipe and said that it did not look like it had any pitch. He asked to borrow a level while we thought to ourselves, oh-no, he'll fail us and set us beck time-wise. But no, he jumped down in the ditch saw the bubble off to (the WRONG) one side and said, "Oh, you're all set.", and passed us (inspection approval).

We laughed soo hard after he left but fixed the area before covering it up.

That's one of the reasons I got out of commercial construction. General contractors foremen @$$HOLES! They do anything and everything to make your job miserable. Some are good, some are great but the bad apples you run across now and then are enough to give you ulcers and make you hate showing up to work thinking, 'what now...' You make three steps ahead each day to show up in the morning to find yourself 2 steps back! :rolleyes:

Anyway, good luck with your repairs and feel free to seek more help here. I'll check in now and then to see how it's coming.

[ncboman]

thanks for all the info and advice but it's a done deal now. Couldn't get on the internet or I'd have posted sooner.

Sawed the pipe about where the pipe wrench is in the above pic but that wasn't the problem spot. Sawed it again further down the line and found the blockage in an L, a bubble soap container in combination with a fistsize clog of hair. Put it back together with Fernco connectors.

I think the slope of the pipes is good. This is the first problem since 1958 so maybe it'll be ok for a while longer.