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

How long do you think it took for this "wad" to build up?

Should she have used a better drain cover than the one she has, with, oh, about ten 3/8" or so holes in it?

Very carefully.

You only have about 6" of snake between the handle and the drain opening. You work that 6" down and then move the handle 6" away from the drain and repeat over and over until things work ok. Patience (and sometime a half-galon of Draino) always wins.

The one on the right is pretty rusty. I don't do anything to mine, just hang it back up in a dry basement. It has a blackish fine coat of rust.

Let me re-phrase, it won't rust apart and works in the condition you show. Usage should clean that up a bit.

I wouldn't put oil on tools that will spread that oil around the household.

YES

Most likely you ran into a 90 degree connection, and had got stuck against it. The trick is to have a slight bend at the head of the snake about 1-2" back This does 2 things

The black goo is usually the oily residue from conditioner.

Didn't it come with a reel ? If not just go and buy a reel that will hold it

As posted elsewhere, the 25' snake probable got stuck at a bend or a T. Put a slight kink about 10-15 degree right behind the expanded wire This will usually help it work it's way past corners and bends.

At one point in time, you didn't know it either No reason to be an ass about the fact that now you do and he doesn't

And a "closet snake" is for use in a clogged toilet bowl. People throw all kinds of stuff down a toilet. The current most popular are the bleach wipes. Since they don't dissolve like toilet paper, they tend to clog up real fast.

Now that's interesting. It was black, but didn't smell bad. It washed off my hands easily. Conditioner makes sense.

Nope. It was tie wrapped (which is what I'm going to do with it right now, as my 'main' snake will be the one in the drum.

Understood! Thanks.

In news:knp82r$i47$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, Attila Iskander belched:

That maybe so, but I've never used a tool without knowing how to use it. People can get hurt that way and you can make a simple problem much worse. And i don't feel I was being an ass, just stating the obvious, because from his own photos it doesn't look like he even know how to use a snake. Or how to use google or youtube You don't pull the whole cable out and try to feed it in. With the time and money he has spent he could of easily hire someone, watched and learned more than he could here. With a lot less headaches Also, I was basing my comment on the number of post he's made on the many things he doesn't know. I have no problem with teaching or helping someone to learn, but they have to be willing to do a little work for them self.

True, it is designed for toilets, but can be used successfully in other drains. As a matter of fact, I 've used one in a shower before

So, we're not talking about what people put down toilets

TomR-

Great summary & explanation.

You know, I once had to replace a few hundred irrigation sprinkler heads and I didn't know how to do that.

So I hired a friend who owns a landscaping company, at about $300/day, with the stipulation that he teach me, and *both* of us replaced almost two hundred sprinkler heads in addition to repairing the valve electrics.

Most of the sprinkler heads were buried, so, we'd fix one, and another would pop up out of the mud.

I learned a lot! For instance, there are *many* types of sprinkler heads, and some are drip, others spray, some adjustable, others set, etc.

So, your suggestion *is* viable.

Yet, another time the pool was a swamp, and I was in line for a church picnic at my house. I hired another friend, at $60/hour, to help and teach me. Guess what? I learned almost nothing from that guy. Dunno why, but, he just replaced stuff, and threw stuff in the pool and vacuumed stuff, but he had no concept of the delights in the details. He just wanted to get the job done. That was a waste of my money.

The problem, of course, would be to find a plumber like the first guy, and not like the second guy, on short notice.

Since it was an emergency, I didn't have the time for anything more than to fire off the original NNTP request. It turns out, I had to learn on the job, due to the nature of the emergency.

However, *now* I have time to learn where I erred.

Googling, I find this nice YouTube video that shows how to clean out a shower drain using the same Cobra drum snake that I have (mine is branded Brasscraft because Home Depot asked for their own differentiating brand).

I had always thought that you run the motor continuously; and that the reverse was for rewinding the cable; but both those assumptions are wrong.

Apparently the forward position is only used *at* an obstruction; and the reverse is only used *momentarily* to get out of a bind.

Of course, they don't tell you how to rewind all that 75 foot of cable *back* into the drum. I called Cobra today and they said you push the cable forward and rewind it always without the motor running.

The only time you use the motor is when you can't push or pull anymore. Then you only use the motor momentarily they said.

So, in this case, even the professional YouTube videos are lacking in the detail needed to actually perform the job properly. You only know enough to ask the questions if you've already done the job itself.