Micky responded to nestork's post about an in-line filter, while you described the concept behind the in _drain_ filter that I linked to.
BTW...there are at least three was to clean the in-drain filter. Sometimes I just wrap my hand around the lint and slide it off without removing the filter from the drain, toss it in the garbage, then rinse my hand. Sometimes I pull filter out and give it a quick hard "snap" over the garbage and the lint comes off. Every now and then I give it a good rinsing, inside and out, after removing the majority of the lint.
One downside is that you sometimes have to rinse out the sink because the slower draining water doesn't always wash everything towards the drain.
What's confusing me is why you guys have so much lint in the water coming out of your washer.
It seems to me that there will be SOME lint, the odd strand of thread and maybe a button or two a year, but there shouldn't be so much lint that the lint filter needs cleaning after every wash.
I've never had a problem with lint clogging a drain line, but it seems reasonable that a fair amount of lint would go down the drain. Just look at the lint screen in a typical dryer. That frequently has a lot of lint after just one use. If lint is in the dryer, seems reasonable it's in the wash water too. Most drain systems aren't that sensitive to it. But if you have one that is marginal, seems that lint from the washer could foul it up.
I have three washers for 21 apartments and all three washers ultimately drain into the same drain pipe and I've never had that drain clog. Maybe it's because that drain pipe connects to the main (6 inch diameter) drain line from the building, and it would take a lot more than lint to clog that line.
I'm just surprised that the lint wouldn't be carried by the water, even if the water is moving slowly, for far enough to reach the main sewer line. Perhaps this is something that only concerns septic tanks... I dunno.
So I assume you don't have a lint trap on the drain hose of any of those washers. Perhaps you should give it a try just to see. I think you'd be surprised how much lint is produced from each load of wash. I'm not saying it has to be cleaned after every wash but there is a fair amount produced each time.
I stopped using the end-of-hose mesh style traps because of the problems I had when they did eventually get filled up. The pump on my front loader is pretty powerful. When the lint trap would get filled up, the water would start shooting out of the trap in all directions. Most of those directions were not down into the utility sink. Eventually it would blow the trap off of the hose where it would then often block the sink drain. The front loader doesn't use enough water to overflow even one side of the double utility sink, but the spray from the filled trap got the floor and walls wet and then I had to reach into the dirty water to find the trap and retrieve it.
Now that I used the plastic in-the-drain filter, those problems are eliminated.
This woudn't be an issue for me but I have a check valve in the laundry sink drain pipe. And I think it would take only a tiny bit of lint near the hinge, or a little more away from the hinge, to keep the valve from shutting completey. As I've said a few times over the years, I need the check valve because sometimes the stream rises higher than the manhole covers near the stream, the stream fills the sewer and the sewer backs up into my basement and the 3 townhouses next to mine, which are the lowest houses in the n'hood.
Indeed, the first time after I installed the check valve that the water got this high, it was entering the sink fast, and I had to go to plan 3 which was a rubber stopper, and a piece of heavy picture frame shoved between the stopper and a shelf above the sink, screwed to the shelf braket which is screwed to the wall. the shelf has maybe 40 pounds of things on it. Now that stopped the water.
Once I forgot to put the stopper in, and even then only about 16 oz. of water got on the floor, which seems to me to mean that the check valve does work somewhat.
But the newest problem is that after 25 years, the rubber stopper seems to have gotten smaller, or the drain hole bigger. The stopper was firmly jambed in place when the sink overflowed, and on aother occasion, I could see water coming out around the edge of the stopper. It's frustrating knowing there's nothing I can do except try to start a continous siphon to the sump pump sump.
I bought another stopper and it seemed smaller, and I've bought two more but haven't tried them yet.
Or maybe I should wrap the old stopper with something? Saran wrap? Deerskin?
LOL
LOL
Pardon me for laughing
I may get one of those. Priority now is to fid a stopper that fits.
replying to 2 door, pharmtechdon wrote: Filter the washing machine rinse out water because it WILL contain lint that will clog your floor drain. A filter can be cleaned out much easier and cheaper than the floor drain
replying to Harry Avant, rsimon wrote: To answer those asking why one needs to block the hair/lint coming from a washing machine when you don't have a laundry sink, I just had my washing machine drain pipe unclogged.. There was so much dog hair and sludge in it - it overflowed into my wetbar sink and on the floor. Rotorooter came out and got rid of the clog but I would really like to find a solution to ensure all the dog hair in my laundry doesn't clog it again
Vacuum the dog. Anything you put before the standpipe may cause more problems than it solves.
It would take a lot of dog hair to clog the drain. You may have other issued causing the hair to get caught up in the pipe. Can you run a wire down the standpipe every three months? How far down the drain was the clog?
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