Sunday I spent a fair bit of trying to deal with a clogged drain for my sister's bathroom (far enough down the path that it's before the kitchen/etc and main drain to sewer, but after all the stuff on the east end of the house, which is the washer drain (which I don't use, as that goes out to the yard), and the sink, shower, and toilet from the bathroom in the guest bedroom).
It's not a total clog--just a slow drain, so that a toilet flush has enough water to flow back up into the shower drain, and more than a minute or two of shower or sink use will fill up the pipes, depending on flow rate (much less at full flow rate).
First up was the spring-snake (25', maybe half of which I could work down into the pipes from the shower drain). I doubt that I reached the clog, but if I did I couldn't do anything to it. I expect it's more likely the snake coiled up around the ID of the drainpipe as I turned it, with the end having caught somewhere in a bend. (as I don't have any wya of knowing where exactly the pipes go or how they connect).
Next up was lots of plunging, in hopes of dislodging the clog enough to allow flow to clear it. Sometimes this works...sometimes it doesn't.
In order for plunging to do anything, I had to block off the drains for washer (unused, but open), sink, and toilet. Sink was easy, just tape over safety drain holes, and pulling the drain plug down tight. Washer drain was harder, having to use a rubber glove, vaseline, and a can that happens to be just a hair smaller than the pipe. Toilet....no real way to plug that with stuff I have here, except to have my sister hold the second plunger down in it, with some gloves stuffed around it's edge to help "seal" the non-round shape of the toilet bowl to the plunger.
This did clear a little bit of the clog, momentarily...but it was only moving the clog around; allowing the drain to drain much faster for a moment (or else it was causing the water to slosh over the top of the clog, I don't know which). Water is still always visible at the bottom of the shower drain, where it elbows to go off and join the rest of the system, about a foot down or so.
I though I would try water pressure, but having no way to seal the drains against high pressure, I thought I'd try to just let gravity and volume do the work, and fill the shallow shower basin (about 3" deep). I only got about an inch and a half deep before the back pressure began flowing out the bottom of the toilet, where it joins the floor. Obviously teh wax seal there is not actually sealing.
So...off to teh store for liquid plumr, two types, one "urgent" and one normal. Urgent was first, but being input to the drain so far from the clog I ddn't expect it to work well, if at all. Tried adding water after some time with no effect, in small amounts several times, hoping it would cause the agent to flwo to the clog and act on it, but no luck. So far same with the regular kind.
Of course, using it wasnt' quite that simple, becuase both my sister and her cat are sensitive to the outgassing the chemicals make. There is no door in the bathroom there, as for whatever reason, after having mounted one there, the house-rebuild crew took it back out. Thankfully it's the same width as the bedroom doors, so I took the one off the computer/music room, and moved it in there temporarily, so my sister can close off the bathroom and any fumes from her bedroom. This also required removing the room-A/C unit and it's window hoses, rearranging stuff in the room to get it out and movng litterbox, etc.
With teh door shut, and the A/C vent in the bathroom closed, but the bathroom window open, and return under the bedroom door blocked, pressure from the bedroom A/C vent prevents fumes from getting back into the bedroom, by pushing them outside. A fan in the bathroom window was also required by my sister, though it will not actually cause air to move outside any faster, and simply causes turbulence and airflow around the room that makes it take longer for fumes to exhaust (and makes some of them mix with air at the bottom of the door in that turbulent zone, causing some molecules to probably actually get back into the bedroom by eddy currents).
Anyway, so presently it is still clogged. Today sometime I'll have to take the toilet itself off the floor, check the wax seal (and probably replace it), and try to get the snake thru the larger toilet drain pipe to the clog, see if I can clear it that way.
If none of this works, then I guess it'll be time to call the landlord to see what he recommends...but I'd rather not do that if I can avoid it.
