Tarkblog

The shower drain has been getting slower and slower…

Unfortunately, we only have one shower, so the problem is hard to ignore. A few days ago it was slow. Not terrible, but slow. I dranoed it.

Two days ago it was much slower. Drano again.

Yesterday morning, almost at a standstill. I tried plunging it, but got nowhere. I also used my drain snake, but it seems to get hung up on some bend in the pipe before the clog. No luck.

Last night, I used a different drain cleaner, to no avail. Ugh, I figured we were going to have to call a plumber.

I figured I might as well throw everything I have at it. So I closed the sink drain, took a platic baggie and shoved it into the shower overflow drain, and started plunging again. After I got my rhythm, I noticed the water was turning brown. What was happening was I was sucking gunk back up from the drain into the shower. Yuck.

I plunged a good 10-15 sets. Each more vigorously than before, but the drain wouldn’t budge. In fact, I could see a current of stuff flowing UP, meaning I was pulling liquid from somewhere (this is a 2nd story bathroom, so it eventually had to stop unless somehow water could flow uphill. I don’t think I have the strength to plunge waste up two stories).

I turned the bathroom sink on, and noticed that when itwas draining, that water was coming into the tub. Odd, especially because the bathroom sink didn’t have any drain problem of its own.

As a last ditch effort, I let the bathroom sink fill up with water to better cap off the drain so that when I plunged the drain system was more air tight. A few plunges, and the water in the bathtub went down like a champ.

Thsi morning, its draining better than it ever did. Now, let’s just hope that water is all going into the sewer and not into the drano induced hole in my pipes.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 6:59 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.