Hubby is at work. I foolishly put (a lot of) egg shells down the garbage disposal. Now the sink doesn’t drain.
I’ve made sure there is nothing in the disposal itself. The clog is lower. I used an acid drain cleaner, labeled safe for the disposal. Didn’t work. I diluted the acid, as labeled, then bailed out the sink as much as possible. I’ve used a plunger, lightly. (Last time I tried it harder, I broke the seal.) No help.
I’m sure there’s just a big clump of egg shell sand in the elbow.
I can’t afford a plumber.
Any suggestions? I’d like to get it taken care of befor hubby gets home tomorrow morning.
What you probably have is a stuffed up trap. The trap is the U shaped part of the piping under the sink. You need to take off the trap and dump out the gunk. Unfortunately, you now have a bunch of acid in there too so use strong, thick gloves or get a plumber. Be sure to tell the plumber about the acid.
Do you have a dual sink, where one has a disposal? The clog may be in the straight section of pipe connecting the two before the elbow trap. It shouldn’t be difficult to take the trap down, clean it out, and reassemble. Make sure you have a bucket and lots of towels to catch the water still in the pipes / sink.
If you live in an apartment complex, I’d tell your neighbors that you’re working on your sink so they don’t flood your place. If the clog is past the trap, and is affecting your neighbors, their drain can flow into your kitchen.
No, the acid has been diluted. The water does drain slowly, like over 4 hours. I’ve filled the sink and its drained twice since the acid. I’ve put my bare hand in the water, with no adverse effects.
Yes I’ve been dealing with this since about 4:30 this morning. The egg shells went down last night. :smack:
I don’t have enough strength in my right hand to use a wrench. I guess I’ll be telling hubby he has a job to do after working his 24 hour shift. I hope he gets some sleep.
Try sticking your vacuum cleaner hose onto the drain of of the kitchen sink. If you have the ability to connect the hose onto the air exhaust of your vacuum cleaner even better. Pushing the lump over the trap will work better than sucking on it.
I’m assuming you don’t have a simple cleanout plug at the bottom of your trap.
If you undo the trap and the blockage isn’t in there it might be further down the pipe. You can pick up an inexpensive pipe snake for $10-$20 at the hardware store, or in a pinch I guess you could try straightening a wire coathanger and poking it around the pipe to break up the clog. Check with a friend, they may have a snake you can borrow, they work wonders.
I have this product. It works great for me, but you had better be carefull or you will have water all over. I suggest you use a hose valve between the hose and product if you try something like this. It expands to the walls of the pipe and pulses when running which vibrates the pipes helping to dislodge the debris.
I used the shop vac, tried to blow out the clog. I think that made it worse. The water went down, but came back after a few seconds, meaning, I believe, I’ve now compressed the clog from egg shell sand to concrete. :smack:
Then I sucked out the water and put two cups of vinegar in. I’m going to run some errands now, so we’ll see…
The very very very first thing you should do is ignore everyone else’s advice above. It is possible the clog is in the disposal, even though you can’t see anything in the top cup area. First, check to see if the disposal blades turn when you turn the disposal on. If they do, then ignore the rest of this post. If the disposal does NOT work when you turn it on, turn it back off and look underneath the disposal. There should be a slot where you can stick an allen wrench. Turning that nut will manually turn the blades, and very likely unclog your disposal. 99% of disposal-side clogs can be fixed with this method, and there’s absolutely ZERO risk of screwing anything up further, so always try this first.
If that doesn’t work, then re-read this thread and take the advanced advice given here.
Been there done that. Making 48 eggs worth of Spanish tortilla is not a project for when there is very low water pressure (exactly one year ago, I just realized). Do post #12. If that doesn’t do it (didn’t for me), then have at it with the plunger (the one you have only for the kitchen and that you never ever use in toilets) with patience and determination (that did it for me). If that doesn’t work, then look for a snake.
Taking stuff apart should only be a very desperate last resort.
What happened here is a good indicator that your clog is somewehre beyond the trap. What you did was to blow water up the vent stack, or into another upstream area from the sink. Since these areas both flow downward back toward the sink, the water came back.
It is looking more likley that you hav a clog that is going to require (hopefully) a small snake to correct. This is not a difficult job, but it takes persistence and the willingness to deal with gross stuff.
Been there. Different sink, different vent. Someone before us, had cut the vent pipe flush with the roof. It filled up with leaves. The plumber did something in the sink that splashed rotten stuff all over the roof. That didn’t clear the problem, so he went to the roof and flushed the vent… all over my bathroom walls. :rolleyes: I love plumbers.
Mosier, I checked the functioning of the disposal before I posted, but thanks for hoping for an easy fix.
I’m leaving vinegar in over night, and most of tomorrow.
Hubby has classes most of the day, so maybe I’ll have success before he notices and tells me how he TOLD me… you get the picture.
For future reference: recycling 48 eggshells into your vegetable garden is a much better way to dispose of them. And makes yummy vegetables grow better, too.
I personally like the story of the guy who rented a power snake and somehow got it going the wrong way, all the way up the vent stack and into his back yard, where it started rooting through his vegetable garden. Didn’t know anything was wrong until his neighbor came over to ask WTF was that thing coming out of his roof.
picu, unless you put a LOT of vinegar down there, it is not likely that the vinegar made it past the trap and is now working on dissolving the eggshells. Seriously, a bucket and a small hand snake, say 15 - 20 feet, should solve your problem.
