Advice requested to unclog a shower stall (75 or 100 foot snake?)

[trader4]

How dumb is she to let that happen?

[DerbyDad03]

...but he does take (an annotate) some nice pictures...

[ChairMan]

Damn, son. If you don't know , maybe you shouldn't be doing the repairs that your doin

[Danny D]

She is a hard-working single mom, who had to take showers to go to work to feed her kids. She pours out her heart for those kids.

She could use the help - so I was glad to try, even though I was clearly clueless myself. Luckily, she cleaned up the mess that I left as I hadn't thought ahead to bring any cleaning supplies with me (where are my pool chemicals when I need them!).

Anyway, the hair clog wouldn't plunge out, but it came out within seconds of inserting the 3/8" snake about 3 feet. I spent more time trying to get the snakes to go their full length (to ensure that I did my best for her).

In doing so, my biggest dilemma was trying to figure out *why* the two snakes wouldn't go anywhere near their full lengths!

I couldn't believe that these 2-inch (or so) pipes wouldn't take a quarter inch snake further than about 10 feet, nor would the pipes accommodate the 3/8 inch snake more than about 3 feet.

What did I do wrong that those snakes wouldn't travel their full lengths?

[dennisgauge]

You're just realizing this now?

Ol' Danny D is what we call a DIY douchebag. They like to talk a lot and act all bright and cheery while asking the stupidest questions and turning the driving of a simple nail into a 3-day melodrama involving several hundred dollars' worth of tools.

[Danny D]

Well, if I didn't do it, she'd have to hire a plumber, and that would cost her a hundred bucks she doesn't have.

I *do* wish I had known about the closet auger idea though ...

I saw those closet augers at Ace Hardware when I asked the guys in the red shirts what I should buy (although I didn't know what they were called at the time).

The Ace guys suggested the longer 25 foot and 50 foot snakes for the shower, saying that the closet auger was only for toilet bowls.

If they had suggested the 3-foot auger, I would have bought it because it was a lot cheaper (IIRC) and I have the 75'foot snake on order from Cobra so I didn't need yet another snake to rust in my garage.

Too bad. I wish I had known what you suggest for the shower. At this point, it's a lesson learned for the future.

[Vic Smith]

Admit it, you just wanted to show off your tools. That's a nice rodding machine, but useless without new cable. I bet there's a story about how you acquired it. Try to spice it up it a bit, ok? Don't say you just picked it up at a garage sale. That's boring.

[Vic Smith]

A closet snake is only good for toilets. Just type it in google.

You weren't using it correctly. You have to keep the turning handle close to the hole to prevent it from twisting up. When it stops, if you have the handle close to the hole and apply pressure while cranking, it'll make the turn at the joint. Usually.

[Dan Espen]

I'm not a plumber, but I've sure fought a lot of snakes in my life.

You think gas cans are a problem? They're nothing compared to snakes.

You just keep working at it. The business end of the one I have that looks like yours has a spiral designed to hook onto the crap that clogs drains, You push it in, twist it, with the free end flopping all around, until you can't go any further.

Pull it out hoping you've snared the problem. If there's nothing there, you try and try and try until you succeed. 15 minutes? You're just getting started.

A pro might show up with a powered snake. If you call a pro, you've failed, turn in your DIY badge of honor.

A real impassable point could indicate a broken pipe or solid object. A pro might use a camera.

When I lived in the Bronx we had a cesspool and I inherited a snake with a 2 inch metal ball on the business end and 1/8 by 3/8 inch spring steel. With that baby I could clear about 100 feet of soil pipe.

I can't tell you how happy I was to move out and toss that monster.

[Danny D]

I've never heard the term before.

It's my mom's fault. She taught me to be polite & responsive to everyone.

Plus, I've been on nntp since the early 1990s, and I've seen what happens when people get personal - so if it gets nasty, I try to be nice - and if it's still nasty, I just bow out of the conversation or ignore the insults.

Is it really stupid to ask what tools to use to unclog plumbing? Or to ask the technique to get the snakes to go their full length?

It cost me roughly about fifty bucks for the two snakes.

Truth be told, I could have gotten away with only one snake, but, I love to learn things - so I bought the second snake so that I could learn how they worked (since they were so different, I figured I could compare the differences to learn more.

Well, it also cost about $120 for the replacement 75' snake, but that won't arrive for another week (I had lent my drum snake to a friend who accidentally kinked it and broke the cable).

So, you're correct if I add up the total cost for the three snakes; but only two were bought for my friend's plumbing.

[Danny D]

That's probably why the guys in the red vests didn't suggest it then, when I had asked for advice on which snake to buy to unclog a shower.

[Danny D]

Ah. Thanks for your advice.

That handle was especially interesting because it was offset ever so slightly, which is odd to see in a handle. It's probably that way for good reasons, but it sure was hard to turn, what with me kneeling on the bathroom floor, leaning precipitously over the lip of the shower stall, with door glass and a toilet bowl hemming my (rather large) frame in, such that I could barely move.

It just wouldn't go more than about 3 feet; but, it turns out, that was enough to wind up a good fistful of brunette hair, dipped in a fine black "mud".

I had to cut the hair off the end of the snake. I tried showing my friend the clump, but she just screamed "get it out of here!", as if it was a live rat or something. Heh heh. Ladies are so squeamish.

< light bulb > As a joke, I should have brought one of my dead six-inch long (foot long with the tail) deer mice and pulled *that* out of the hole (like a magician with a rabbit out of a tophat).

Heh heh ... she would have rememberd *that* for a long time!

[Danny D]

Yup. The flopping all around part is what surprised me.

I had 47 feet of that 50-foot snake flopping about the shower stall.

My friend was wondering if I knew what I was doing, but, then, she didn't want to see *this*, which was the end result:

Note: Sorry for the crummy cellphone pictures; I usually use better equipment but I didn't have it with me.

Ah, I wonder if they're cheap enough yet to make it worth while to have a tunnel cam?

It would have been great to see *what* was blocking the snakes!

Interesting. A "mace snake".

[Danny D]

Maybe. But perhaps next time I'm showing off my tools, I shouldn't pick my rustiest most broken ones, huh? :)

I found out that Brasscraft is just a name; the real company is Cobra, who called me back on my way to Lisa's house; so I ordered the new 3/8" 75-foot replacement cable, which will arrive next week.

The trick right now is figuring out how to prevent the new cables from rusting - or - is that futile?

How about I make up a story where I acquired it on Craigslist after driving from California to Detroit?

[chaniarts]

yes, harbor freight has one that's not too much

[Dan Espen]

Hey, he could be in one of the many OT threads.

At least he's mostly on topic.

Plus he has a great first name.

[Dan Espen]

They don't rust.

[CRNG]

On Fri, 24 May 2013 18:43:43 +0000 (UTC), Danny D wrote in Re Re: Advice requested to unclog a shower stall (75 or 100 foot snake?):

Good man. We need a lot more of that kind consideration in this country. There used to be a lot of it, but not so much anymore.

What happened to the kid's dad? Did he run out on her?

[TomR]

Sometimes, the snake reaches a Tee connection and it can't make the turn to continue further down in the pipe.

Sometimes, you can get it to go past where it is hung up by doing the twist routine while pushing slightly on the snake. I think the spiral coiled end can then sometimes sort of thread itself forward and allow the snake to get past the hard turn.

Generally speaking, the snakes that you have were too long to easily work with in the situation that you had. One way to know if the clog is far down in the pipe and not just near the drain entrance is if it takes a awhile with the water flowing down the drain before it starts to back up into the shower or tub. That can sometimes mean that the drain pipe has to fill with water first all the way down to the clog before it backs up into the shower or tub. If it gets clogged right away, as soon as the shower starts draining, the clog is near the drain entrance (and, as others have said, that is where it usually is).

Your prior question about how to twist the snake and not cause it to curl up in the room where you are working is that you have to allow the snake to lay out horizontally across the floor in a fairly straight line and into the next room if needed. That way, the whole snake can turn freely on the floor and that keeps it from getting tangled/curled.

If you go to

and do a search for "unclog a tub drain" or something similar, you'll see lots of useful videos on how to do it. Many will show the Zip-It or similar cheap plastic hair removal devices and how they drag out big wads of hair like what you discovered.

[Danny D]

It's a long story, and it's OT, but suffice to say she put up with way more for far too long than she should have, so, the current situation ... as bad as it is ... is still better for her and her kids (she has them 100% of the time) than the previous situation was.