Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Upstairs laundry room drain question

Bought house a few months ago so don't know history, but here is current situation. Laundry room is upstairs adjacent to a bathroom. Small diameter pipe comes through wall from direction of laundry room and connects into drain pipe below one of the bathroom sinks. Recently the bathroom sink stopped draining - I'm calling it clogged because any water takes several hours to drain. We've been using the sink a few feet away in same bathroom until I have time to deal with the clog (so no big inconvenience), but I noticed water backs up onto the sink when doing laundry. It's a high efficienc top loading washer if that makes any difference.

Not wanting drain cleaning chemicals getting in our expensive new clothes washer, my initial thought was to call a plumber, but what should my expectations be for the plumber? How is he going to unclog the drain? If his first inclination is to disconnect the washer from its drain hose and put Liquid Plumr in the sink, I can do that. Thoughts?

buy a snake. one of the first things a homeowner should buy.

find your cleanouts and start rooting her out like a drunken bar girl.

If you can get at it from the drain, take off the trap and go at it from under the sink.

Yup...skip the chemicals ! The drain line from the washer needs/ed to be 2" there is a trap between the floor (where the washer is)and the abs pipe the drain hose goes in...unless the drain hose from the washer drain rite into the sink...both the sink and the washer should have their own traps ....easy fix...Google up some Rough in of the sink drain system and the washer u will see what's up !

It's probably lint from the washer clogging things up.

I'd take the trap off the sink and snake it really good. I've also used one of those thinguses that you hook up to your garden hose to blast out a clog. It worked really well on lint. You stick the thingus in the drain and then turn on the water and the pressure causes the thingus to inflate and seal the pipe. A little while later, after a lot vibration, you hear the clog come loose.

Also FYI check your vent stack for obstructions.A clogged vent will slow drainage to a standstill.

Plug the sink overflow and wrap the pipe of a shop vac in duct tape till it seals in the drain.
Switch from suck to blow until the clog is gone. Probably hair and toothpaste.

Any plumber worth his salt will try to clear a clog mechanically (auger, snake,etc.) rather than with chemicals. The main exception to this would be a urinal where minerals from urine can crystallize and cause a clog.

Bathroom fixtures are usually plumbed together in a group and should not include a standpipe for the washing machine discharge in that group as code doesn't allow it. However, your house may have been built before such codes were enacted.

I's suggest that you first pull the pop-up from the clogged sink. Your description indicates that you normally use one sink more than the other. The same thing happens at my house and it's usually because of long hair being washed down the drain and getting tangled in the pop-up assembly. Cleaning that nasty mess should clear that drain.

Water backing up into the sink when the washer discharges could be caused by many things including a clog downstream, but also by an undersized trap and or stand pipe and branch piping. This is getting to be a bit commonplace when HE washers are used in older houses because the HE units discharge faster and slow or undersized drains can't always handle it.

As a plumber, I've seen a lot of houses with severe water damage caused by small leaks. Washing machines on a main or upper level account for a lot of those damaged homes. It might be worth your while to have the piping looked at on a non-emergency basis (it's cheaper that way)to make sure that you're not sitting on a ticking water bomb.

i'd buy a bunch of tools and parts and start randomly ripping schit apart, getting madder and madder all the time until i'm smashing schit and the whole family is cowering. then i'd call a plumber and have my wife deal with him while i waited at the Legion.

Sounds like me with the dishwasher.

Pour a couple tablespoons full of baking soda down drain, followed with cup of vinegar, wait 15 or 20 minutes then follow with some hot water. Soap scum and lint plug up the drain pretty good.... and regular drain cleaners won't work on it.


Phil

Thanks, guys! Bought a snake earlier this week, and that did the trick after over an hour of work - apparently the clog was big. Next step, when I get some time, is to figure out whether I have a plumbing problem that needs a plumber to re-pipe or the clog was just one of those things that's going to happen from time to time.

Whether it repeats depends a lot on how your pipes are hooked up. My washer standpipe has been in constant use for 20 years with 0 problems.
Others aren't so lucky. My mother had a mobile home and the shower clogged. I couldn't get a snake more than 12" down it. We finally had to get a plumber. He ended up cutting an access hole in the back of a kitchen cabinet in the next room. The manufacturer had used a vent fitting instead of a drain fitting and it blocked the snake besides filling up with gunk from the shower.