Slow drain......sometimes?

scott2001

19 years ago

I renovated my upstairs bathroom. Before the renovation the sink worked fine (I think). I never really used it except to test when i bought the house. I replaced the wall mount sink with a pedestal, and had to replace the P-trap, and approximately 2 feet of galvanized pipe that ran behind the wall. The trap and new pvc is all 1.5 inch.

With everything hooked up I run the faucet and get a slow drain. I cry, go buy an auger, take the sink of the wall, and spend a Saturday cleaning the line. I pulled up some stuff, but not much, and ran all 25' of the line out.

I hook the sink back up loosely, run the water for a min or so, and everything runs like a champ. Whoopie! I think

So I tighten everything, test some more, and thats when I notice the P-trap is leaking (I damaged an edge while pulling out the snake). I cry some more, replace the p-trap, and low an behold it's slow again. Really slow.

When the ptrap is loose and leaking just a drop or two the water drains great. When it's tight (air tight?) its slow as dirt. I think i have a venting problem? To the roof with an auger? Any thoughts?

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Comments (3)

davidandkasie
19 years ago
vent.
scott2001
Original Author
19 years ago
Vent. So off to the roof I went to snake the vent. 25' of auger with no resistance. Ran a garden hose in it for 3 mins and nothing. So obviously if its a vent clog its not in the main stack, but in the pipe that connects the sink, to the stack for venting. I cant drop a snake, and then make it jump to the left or right so how do I get to the clog? To help and illustrate I've uploaded a few pictures and drawings to a photo account. Each photo has notes, and if you hold your mouse over the pipes in the pictures some more information about what you're looking at will pop up. Will I have to tear into a wall to get at the vent?.....if so How do I know where to cut?......I really wish I had taken more pictures while everything was gutted.

Here is a link that might be useful: pictures of my slow drain prob
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hendricus
19 years ago
A very previous post had a similar problem. Fill the sink with water and stick a straw through the water into the drain with the top of the straw above the water and see if that drains normally.

It doesn't sound like the vent is plugged but that you have no effective vent. Look up "new bathtub drain completely clogged" and "Mystery of the clogged drain solved" about a third of the page down right in this forum.