Had another plumbing incident this morning. I thought it would have been easier, but in typical fashion, things didn’t go as planned. Here’s the history; Maybe about a month or so ago, our tub stopped draining properly. Taking a shower would fill the tub up and then it would take over an hour to drain out.I tried different liquid decloggers, I tried the using the Snake and nothing seemed to help. Now since the problem happened out of the blue, I figured it must of been something that went down the drain. The kids have a lot of bath toys, so anything was possible.
In the basement, under the tub, I followed the drain, and there seems to be some type of a trap. My plan was to open this trap and snake both ways to hopefully clear out the blockage. Now before I could do this, I had to clear the area in the basement as I would assume opening this trap would cause somewhat of a mess. This is the reason it’s taken me so long to do what I was thinking would be a rather easy project.
This morning I decided that I had to get this problem resolved so I moved everything around in the basement and put a garbage can under the area I was going to work. So I figured opening this trap would be easy, boy was I wrong. I could not get this thing open. After trying numerous ways to get this thing to budge, I was going to give up. But because of all the pressure I was putting on some of the pipes, I had to run a little water and check for leaks. And sure enough, whatever I did broke a seal somewhere and water was running down from the pipes. Well, I guess I can’t give up now,
So after venting some frustrations, and eating lunch I headed back down to tackle this project with a different approach. I had no choice this time, I had to get this fixed. Instead of going after the trap, I started removing pipes from the drain assembly. After removing the first pipe, I found the blockage. There was not one, but two shampoo tops from the kids shampoo stuck in this pipe.
I got the pipe all cleaned out and ran the snake down the rest of the pipe, which seemed to be clear. I had to run to Ace and pick up a new piece of pipe and some new couplers. I put everything back together, and had my wife turn the water on while I watched from downstairs. Wow, not a single drip of water! And another Wow, the tub did not fill up! It drained as fast as water could be put in.
Now I’ve had four successful plumbing jobs in the last couple of months, but I still hate doing plumbing and don’t look forward to the next one.