So the bathtub in our upstairs bathroom is running slow. The sink and the toilet are draining fine, and my wife has long hair, so I’ve been assuming there’s a hair clog somewhere in there. Yes, she will start using the hair catcher after we fix this.
Here’s what I’ve tried so far:
[ul]
[li]Run a Zip It through the drain. It came back clean.[/li][li]Run a manual auger/snake (the kind that comes on a rotating spool) through the overflow drain. I got it in there about 8 to 10 feet before I hit an obstruction that I couldn’t get past, which I’m assuming is the joint from the tub drainpipe to the main vertical drain for the bathroom. In any case, the end of the auger came back clean.[/li][li]Poured a couple of gallons of boiling water down it.[/li][li]Emptied a full bottle of draino down it.[/li][/ul]
I’ve about exhausted the limits of my plumbing knowledge here. My next steps are to either rent a power snake or call a plumber, both of which will cost money.
sound like a bad joint where the lines intersect. If it is easy to access I would take it apart, very easy to replace clogged steel pipes with PVC using hubless clamps.
Do you have a garden hose? Run it into your bathroom through a window. Put the nozzle into the drain and seal it off with a towel or some duct tape. And then turn the hose on high. The high pressure of the water from the hose will blast through any obstructions in the drain line and wash them down the line.
I had one more go at it with the hand auger. When I hit that joint where I got stopped before, I shoved the cable juuuust a little bit harder than I had on the first couple of tries and gave the drum a few spins. It must have been just enough to let the tip snag on the clog, because the standing water drained immediately. Out came a wad of hair about the size of a large rat.
If the vent is clogged by ice or snow, flushing the toilet may suck the water out of the bathtub trap. With the trap empty, sewer gas can come in.
If you notice this smell, before going up on the roof in mid-winter, run water in the tub after flushing the toilet so there’s always water in the tub trap.
Try some of that “buildup remover” stuff; our shower drain has a weird bend in it, and I think it slows the flow enough that soap and crud comes out of solution, and hair tends to stick there as well.
Running that buildup remover stuff through it every few months and using a wire-mesh hair strainer seems to keep everything flowing smoothly for us. Before that regimen, it would crud up and just about clog every 2-3 months like clockwork. The hair strainer stretches that to about 6, but if I use the buildup remover, it never has an issue.
Or shave your head. Since I’ve shaved my head I have had zero drain issues. In the same two year period I’ve had to clean out my gf’s shower drain a few times.
I plunge our tub once a week. I’ve got two plungers. One goes over the overflow to provide a good seal.
I’ve got the wife (mostly) trained to use the hair trap, so I don’t get much anymore. I used to get hairballs up to golf ball sized on a regular basis before that.
I’m surprised nobody mention this. Is it a trip lever stopper? If so how old is it. Most likely the plunger is highly calcified and is stuck in a halfway position to stopping the drain. Usually if its that bad replacement is the only solution. However, a strong multi dose of Limeaway or CLR might dissolve the worst of it and then you can remove or work loose the trip lever stopper to freely move.
It doesn’t have to be hair, people who pour various oils into their water to help keep their skin soft etc. get wastepipe blockage problems aswell.
I think caused by coagulation as they cool further down the pipe.
Had my bathtub back up on me many times. Used many of the methods here, and it usually worked. I once had a stop-up that would go away. The snake would catch it, cleaners did nothing, it just sat, undraining. Before I called the plumber, though, I stuck my shop-vac into the drain, put a piece of plastic over the overflow, and turned it on.
After a few seconds of straining, I heard a burp and bubble, and the vac sucked up the blockage, flows freely now. This is my usual go to repair now when it backs up, which happens much less frequently now. (and this is a shower shared by 3 people with longish to long hair.)
We just had a similarly frustrating ordeal with the bathtub. My mother uses some spray on hair paint or something because she has thinning hair and that shit is like concrete. Well, of course it gets washed down the drain every time she takes a shower. On top of long hair from two women folk and it was the makings of a clog from hell. My dad tried everything suggested in this thread. Multiple times. He even opened up the main drain line and started running his long ass electric snake through it. Finally what got the clog removed was my brother climbing up on the roof and using a combination of the snake and the hose down the air intake pipe or whatever it’s called.