I’ve recently bought a power drain snake from Harbor Freight. It’s this one.
Can I run it down the toilet? I’m unconcerned about scratching the porcelain as I could replace it if necessary. Is it probable that there is a clog within the toilet itself?
Recently the shower drain has had water flowing out of it when I run the washing machine. I suspect that this is related to the toilet problem. There’s no external cleanout as far as I can tell. Can I run this power snake down the shower drain?
Thanks. I was looking at snaking toilet videos and some of them showed a short snake like thing that looked like it just snaked the toilet so I was wondering if there was some kind of possible blockage in the toilet itself. I’ve got a manual snake that I could just run down the toilet.
I just hate removing toilets, but I don’t want to break a $400 dollar machine either. I guess I’ll remove the toilet and ream it out the sewer. The valve is a little leaky anyhow and probably needs to be replaced anyhow.
If you’re living in warm CA you might have an exterior cleanout that will go from the house to the street. It might be under one of those green plastic access panels. If you think you might have tree root problems you could first try snaking from the exterior cleanout to the street line.
If you are getting water coming up the shower drain when the washing machine is running then the problem is probably in the main.
Getting a snake through any trap takes a lot of work. Check to see if you have a clean out somewhere in the house. If not then I would pull the toilet and go from there. If you are having root problems then you are going to need a 3 or 4 inch cutter.
The snake for cleaning out a toilet is call a Bull snake or a toilet snake. The snake is in a J shaped tube. the J contains the snake for the first 90 degree turn, a free snake is hard to push through without getting your hands close to the opening.
And as an thought, they make special gloves to use when working with a snake. They are leather gloves, with metal short strips on the inside. They are really nice to use.
yah, I wanna see a video of a 100 lb power driven snake run down a roof vent.
You can’t run it through a toilet because ANY disruption of the snake would cause it to coil back on the fixture and shatter it (if you can even get it to bend that much).
It takes about one minute to pull a toilet up for access to the drain line.
I’ve got a bizarre fascination with tools. Here in Santa Barbara it’s about $300 to get a plumber to come out and Harbor Freight had a 20% off coupon so it was actually less than $300. If I use it successfully twice, I’m ahead of the game. I expect the probable outcome to be breaking the sewage pipe and a $5000 bill.
I’ve got at least two cleanouts, one for the old plumbing in the kitchen and one out by the front of the house. I’m struggling to remember but I think there may have been something odd where the toilet is connected differently from the shower. This is totally gross, but sometimes the city clears the sewer lines by blasting water through the sewer lines and gross virus and bacteria laden air comes up through the toilet. i should probably get tested for various flavors of hepatitis.:eek:
Fortunately, that hasn’t happened in years, but it cracks me up when dopers get all paranoid about flushing the toilet with the lid up. They’d go apoplectic in my house.
I’ll pop the toilet and snake it and see if that helps.
I’m struggling to see how a clog in the toilet itself could cause water to back up through the shower drain. Surely the clog must at least be downstream of the shower waste?
you might have a tub drain meet a sink drain in a Y, this then meets a toilet drain at a sanitary Y which continues on.
so a clog just past the toilet will block both the tub and toilet. the tub being a low elevation drain will backup. in old iron plumbing which can rust (forming barbs, things like tampons can snag and form a plug at or just after the sanitary Y of the toilet.
I rent from a tool rental place not far from me. Good to know about the gloves - those snakes are scary, though I’ve gotten good at using them from excessive practice.
As for actual toilet clogs, I’ve found they are very easy if you pop the toilet. Like when our small bathroom toilet clogged.
Well, thanks for all the good advice. I grabbed a manual snake and ran it down the shower drain. After considerable effort, I cleared the drain. I ran the snake as far as I could get it to go, and managed to get the snake stuck.
This is where I realized that a plumber is a bargain. I tried to reverse the snake, but then started thinking that I’ll probably unravel the snake and make it worse. So after major finagling, and much rotating, I managed to extricate the snake. Phew.
I just ran the washing machine with a wet vac on the ready and the water drained with no problem.
After all this, I seem to recall that the toilet has a more direct connection to the main sewer line and the sink, shower, and washer are all connected to a separate line that runs clear down to the front of the house. The cleanout is down there.
The direct connection to the sewer is probably what causes sewer gas to come up through the toilet and not the shower when the city is doing its sewer maintenance. Maybe I’ll fab a toilet bowl gasket that I can jam onto the bowl when said maintenance occurs.
So, I guess there’s probably a constricted passage in the toilet itself. The toilet clogs from poop and toilet paper and not from pee. The water is pretty hard here and the toilet gets some really hard mineral deposits. I’ll get one of those special toilet thingamajigs and see if that helps.
If that doesn’t work, I’ll remove the toilet and use the super duper pipe reamer to clear out that sewer line. Whereupon I’ll probably get that stuck. At least in that case, I’ll only have to blow out a few feet of concrete walkway rather than a 100.
I admire your tenacity Darryl Lict. Just bear in mind that it’s generally cheaper to have a plumber fix plumbing issues than to have a plumber fix plumber issues.
My mantra is always “Plumbing leads to more plumbing.” Doesn’t keep me from trying tho.
I like that, but mine is slightly different… “Amature plumbing generally leads to professional plumbing.”
My plumber and I have come to an agreement, he doesn’t try to ‘be a carpenter’ and I don’t try to ‘be a plumber’.
