Dodgy Drains - any ideas?

[Clive]

If you have been quoted =A3111 then that's what you have been quoted - but it seems steep to me.

My mother's drains had a similar problem. A local "specialist" firm quoted =A3120 per hour (or part thereof). Following suggestions from this group, I contacted mother's water company. They quoted =A365 / hour (Thames Water). Young lad was round in under 2 hours. He lifted the inspection cover - plunged for 30 seconds and no more block. Best =A365 I had spent because if problem had been with public sewer he could have rodded and hosed from the road at no cost to me. After clearing the block, we mixed Caustic Soda and water ( from Homebase, I think) in the sink and pulled the plug - just to clean any residual "gunge".

It is possible (I'm guessing here) that if you can't show someone where the inspection cover is on your property they can turn round and say they can't fix the problem.

I recognise it's really difficult to know what to do when you can't see the problem. Two ideas where the inspection cover may be

1. Where do your soil pipe and other waste water pipes go underground? Surely there will be an inspection chamber near there?
2. Can you see a little metal "cube" with a grille at the front? I think that's an "odour vent" (don't know correct term) from inspection chamber. At my mother's house it was almost completely buried by the paving that has been laid 30 years ago.

Drains. Ugh, horrid. Good luck

Clive

[beamer]

Ok.......I've just had a phonecall from my wife.

She heard a very loud gurgling noise in the house which made her panic a bit as she thought the bathroom was flooding. Upon investigation, the toilet now flushes perfectly!!!!

It *seems* that the drain has cleared itself!?!?!

I danced a little jog but I'm still a little suspicious.

Could the caustic soda finally worked it's magic?

I recommended she clean flushes the toilet a few times to clear away any remnants of the blockage. I'm also planning to do a few more precuationary doses of caustic soda and to try and find flippin' missing manhole.

Is there anything else I should be doing do you think?

Thanks for all the help.

(wahey!)

[Stuart Noble]

Wahey indeed. Some things right themselves. Caustic is slippery so, apart from breaking down paper and stuff, it lubricates. Yes, do find the manhole cover. Everybody should know where that and the water company's stopcock are.

[The Medway Handyman]

I'm claiming that one as a miracle :-)

Wahey indeed.

[RobertL]

Don't neglect the simple approach: buy a plunger and whack it up and down in the recently flushed and full loo. make sure it seals well against the sides of the loo so that you move the whole water column up/down.

Robert

[cj]

You lucky B*^*&R ,still try and find the drain layout and access points though. You may not be as Jammy next time.

Seems Xmas has come early..ho ho ho!

CJ

[Clive]

A trick I was given (on uk.diy, methinks) is if you can't get a good seal with a plunger in the toilet bowl, buy a mop, one of those with strips of fabric is fine or a traditional "string" one. Then insert the mop (business end first !) into the pan (alongside whatever "material" is in the pan. Push the mop in well to block the whole of the exit pipe. Fill the toilet with a bucket of water - you can flush the loo but then you lose control of the amount of water going in ... you get the idea of the outcome ...

Then when the toilet bowl is full of water (and the rest) , "pump" the handle of the mop up and down. This tries to force the blockage out and if even a little moves, creates a syphon to pull the water in the bowl through. You get a really satisying whoosh or gurgle (I think the op heard one of those) as the blockage clears. I have had to do this up to 4 times to clear a blockage (on a toilet with an incredibly badly installed outlet pipe) and it does work.

I would do this a second time after success, maybe even once a month, even in the absence of an apparent block, if your loo is susceptible to blocking, to stop anything building up.

Clive

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:51:57 -0800 (PST) someone who may be beamer wrote this:-

Then there should be an intercepting trap there. It may have been deeper than you dug.

However these should be inspection hatches at corners in the drains and since there are not perhaps they run straight to the intercepting trap.

As others have suggested, find out where things are now as you may not be so lucky next time.

[beamer]

without success but not using the aforementioned method.

Definitely will try and locate the drain - was going to do it this weekend but got distracted by my new car project ('66 Sunbeam). Ooops.

Now my boiler is playing up! Grrrhhhh....

Should have some free time over Xmas so will try and find the drain then.

[beamer]

HI All,

I thought those of you that have helped with this may be interested to hear the latest.

Predictably the drain blocked again except this time it was far worse.

I called up the local water company again. Instead of saying it was my problem (which is what they said last time) they sent someone out to investigate!!

They found a manhole roughly in the area I was hoping to find it. The reason I didn't find it was that it was buried far deeper than I expected. They used a metal detector.

After a fair bit of digging the manhole was opened up and rodded. Took a significant amount of swearing before it eventually cleared. Problem (hopefully) solved. No evidence of roots or anything else causing problems just "stuff" blocking both the u-bend and the rodding hole (I'm sure there are proper terms for these).

Needless to say I got charged =A390, but to get a working toilet again at 11pm it was worth every penny.

Cheers.