Slow Drain Questions

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Kradak

Kradak

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Jan 1, 2011
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My drains (kitchen, bathroom, basement laundry) are slow, verging on stuck. The toilets don't seem to backup, but I'll assume that this is because the path is long compared to the volume that I drop and the long time between flushes. Doe s this seem reasonable?

Can one cause (food or hair or god knows what) affect all of my drains, or would this suggest that there is some larger problem like a root (or what)?

Tomorrow the rooter guy is coming by. Will this be sufficient, or should I pay someone to jack the house up 15 feet in order to develop more hydrostatic pressure???:)
 
you have a clogged drain and the rooter guy if he knows what he is doing should be able to fix your problem....

A drain only requires 1/4" of pitch per foot to drain properly.

A word of caution... Most companies that have rooter in their name do drain cleaning at premium prices...

They tend to have larger advertising costs and franchise fees that the customers foot the bill for...
 
The things I learned today:

1. Everything worked fine.
2. My house is nearing 50 years old and the drain pipes are galvanized 1.5-2" to cast iron. The plumber suggested that they are in OK shape, but will get clogged more easily in time due to internal surface area developing. He suggested a replacement with PVC.

Sounds good to me. As far as I understand, duct-taping together several paper towel tubes would not be an OK solution.
3. The drain pipes all converge on the sewer line. Unfortunately, the pipes are run under my basement foundation, and he quoted $200/foot for digging into the concrete, making the replacement, and patching the hole.

Thanks for your help. Hope my reporting can be of help to someone else!
 
Had to replace most of the galvanized drain lines in my 50-yr.-old Washington house a few years ago. The insides were either almost completely corroded closed or rotted out on the bottom (Rooter guy showed me the images his camera took), making heavy-volume fixture draining a long process. Wound up replacing all of the supply lines as well, some of which were clogged up to the point of light barely showing through a 6-ft. stick. Total bill was around $6000.
 
I don't think I'm alone in being slow to reply to my messages. As with many things DIY, we've got jobs, kids, and spouses that don't want us to screw up anything we do to be helpful. Thus, our jobs take more time that it would if we were paying someone!

As far as our drains are concerned, we have been motoring along. I have used bioClean every once in a while. Also, having my wife cut her hair short seems to have helped. We are renovating the adjacent master bath now, and have decided to pay the plumber to upgrade the drains to larger-diameter PVC.

Thanks for your help!
 
Before getting a replacement, get your drains scoped with a camera. Worth the cost because you can actually see where the problems are and how bad they may/may not be.

Demolition is tough but you can do it yourself. Rent an electric jack hammer and rock-n-roll. Replacing the pipe after all that effort is close to tinker-toy easy -- but you need to know what you are doing. Lots of guys know how and they don't have big expensive overhead to pay for.

Go easy. Be smart!
 
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