I hate plumbing
2003-11-02 11:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbearWe made it through yesterday's party without being able to wash dishes -- the kitchen sink wasn't draining. It still wasn't draining after I spent all yesterday morning with the snake, and such measures as dumping several pots of boiling water down it. And snaked out the 2" drain from the outside cleanout. I thought.
Before you ask, no, we didn't try chemical measures. Some of the chemicals are bad for iron pipes, and the rest are bad for PVC -- we have both. In series.
So this morning I emptied the under-sink cabinet, disassembled the P-trap, and ran the snake in that way. After several tries yielded a lot of damp rust and a live spider but no congealed fat, I realized that the snake's preferred path was up the vent rather than down the drain. Feh. Back to the outside cleanout.
Cleaning out the T-joint where the sink drain joins the 2" drain pipe (inside the wall, of course) was done using a right-angled wire brush improvised from a length of 10-gauge stranded copper wire. I wanted to try getting it up the sink drain, but no dice. Nevertheless, it helped. The sink took significantly longer to back up, but back up it did.
This time, uncapping the cleanout yielded a rush of tepid, soapy, greasy water. (I warned you this was a dirty story.) I keep an old, rusty snake out in back by the cleanout, because it gets far too disgustingly filthy to bring inside, though between uses the insects and the rain manage to clean it enough to make handling it at least tolerable, if you're wearing grubbies and plan on washing your hands with Boraxo a couple of times afterwards.
Turns out there were at least three major clogs in the 2" behind the one I cleared out yesterday.
Before you ask, no, we didn't try chemical measures. Some of the chemicals are bad for iron pipes, and the rest are bad for PVC -- we have both. In series.
So this morning I emptied the under-sink cabinet, disassembled the P-trap, and ran the snake in that way. After several tries yielded a lot of damp rust and a live spider but no congealed fat, I realized that the snake's preferred path was up the vent rather than down the drain. Feh. Back to the outside cleanout.
Cleaning out the T-joint where the sink drain joins the 2" drain pipe (inside the wall, of course) was done using a right-angled wire brush improvised from a length of 10-gauge stranded copper wire. I wanted to try getting it up the sink drain, but no dice. Nevertheless, it helped. The sink took significantly longer to back up, but back up it did.
This time, uncapping the cleanout yielded a rush of tepid, soapy, greasy water. (I warned you this was a dirty story.) I keep an old, rusty snake out in back by the cleanout, because it gets far too disgustingly filthy to bring inside, though between uses the insects and the rain manage to clean it enough to make handling it at least tolerable, if you're wearing grubbies and plan on washing your hands with Boraxo a couple of times afterwards.
Turns out there were at least three major clogs in the 2" behind the one I cleared out yesterday.