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Anybody Know Any Plumbers That Owe You A Favor?

I'd like to talk to them.

Our washing machine has been back flowing and spilling water out of it's drain on a fairly regular basis lately, to the point where we just keep a towel down there so we can actually get some laundry done. We tried putting Draino-type chemicals down there with no luck, and when I tried to run a snake down there, I couldn't get very far, just hitting metal. So I thought I was just hitting a really bad angle.

So tonight, I finally got fed up, called my father-in-law (who does a lot of landscaping and irrigation plumbing) over and we tore the wall open so we could get to the pipes. Sure enough, we thought, the trap for the line before the drain was very tight and probably was having a problem with the water flow, so it was getting backed up (and that's also what we were hitting with the snake). We went down to Lowes to get some new pipes, told the old nasty (and nearly 30 pounds worth) of steel pipes that were in there, hooked up some much easier-to-work-with PVC, and before we hooked it up, my father-in-law ran his snake into the sewer drain about 20 feet, hopefully clearing up anything that would be causing the backflow.

So we hooked it all back up, and I sent my father-in-law home as he was exhausted (he was at work early this morning). We ran a load, and water still came out of the drain. Ugh...back to the drawing board.

Plumber I am not, so plumber I will call. Anybody know anybody good and fair priced or related to one that could help a guy out?

Posted by Jake on 02/07/06 @ 11:21 PM
Posted in Jake | 3 Comments | Permalink
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3 Comments

Rachel said on 02/08/06 @ 07:58 AM:
Let me know what you find out. We have that exact same problem. I have to stand out in the garage with the washing machine and wait for it to start draining. Then I have to listen for it to start backing up, stop the machine, wait about 2 minutes and then restart it. Then it will finish draining without a problem. Then I have to do it for the rinse cycle too. What a pain, but I sure get a lot of reading done.

HandyGuy said on 02/08/06 @ 07:54 PM:
Without knowing the details of your situation, here's what I can offer. In most houses, nothing puts more water into a drain faster than a washing machine. I know what you're thinking, the bathtub holds that much. Yeah, but it's allowed to drain, gravity and all, it's not being pumped. I'm assuming this drain worked fine at some point before. Don't know what you've got under the ground there, but here in the Midwest, this problem almost always turns out to be roots infiltrating the clay tile (or worse) pipes under the yards of older houses and restricting the flow. The washer indicates the problem first, but others usually follow. Newer plastics don't allow root penetration unless they've been damaged. How old is your place?

Jake said on 02/08/06 @ 08:00 PM:
The house was built in 1972, just FYI.

I actually talked to some of the maintenance guys at our office who help maintain our vacation homes and they said that the sewer vent may be getting clogged, as if it can't let air down (similar to when you cover the end of a straw) the water won't drain well at all. So I'm going to run a snake down the vent pipe from the roof and see if that helps. I'll post an entry accordingly if it does.

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