| DRAIN
CLEANING |
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Checking
the clean out
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When your toilet and tub are
backing up together, your main sewer would be clogged like
right side picture. You can understand this situation by checking
your clean out in front of your house. If your clean out is
backing up, you need to clean your main sewer line. |
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| Normal clean out |
It is already clogged. Inside
sewage was overflowed. |
When you open the cap of center picture, you can see sewage backing up |
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You need to open the clean
out cap very carefully because sewage will come up like a
fountain due to water pressure. The below picture is
showing the sewage comes up as soon as loosening the cap. |
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| Main
Drain Backs Up |
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| If
your main sewer line is backs up, your tub, shower
pan and toilet will be back up but kitchen or lavatory
seems no problem. If kitchen drain combined with tub
drain before meeting main sewer, the kitchen sewage would
go to the tub. All of these symptoms come from the
level of each fixture. Tub, shower and toilet are
lower than kitchen sink or lavatory. That’s
why you can’t see kitchen or lavatory backing
up in case of main sewer line backs up. If you have
no clean out, you need to pull a toilet and snake
the sewer line because size of sewer line is normally
over than 3” and other drain lines are less
than 3” except toilet line in the house. |
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| Kitchen
Drain Backs Up |
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Kitchen
drain is clogged by the grease. Even if you don’t
use any grease in the drain, grease in the kitchen
drain will be developed by the soapy water.
Clogged situation caused
by the grease will be like left side upper picture.
Even you snake, lots of grease will be remained on the surface of the pipe inside
like left side lower picture |
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This
remained grease will get harder and harder and finally
it will become like a stone. You can see the solid
grease inside of the pipe in left side picture. We have
to use a chisel to remove it. However if you use
kitchen drain, sewage will still remain between the
grease like above picture. And this remained sewage
will corrode the pipe |
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The
left side picture is showing the corroded pipe due
to inside grease. It will be finally leaking. |
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The
left side picture is showing the leaking. To prevent
this leaking problem, I would like to suggest to clean the kitchen drain line
by high water pressure regularly. Recommendable time
would be once in every 2~3 years. |
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| Laundry
Backs Up |
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your laundry drain is clogged or reduced its internal
size by the grease, your wash machine sewage will
back up. Occasionally, when your main drain clogged
partially, the sewage of wash machine will back up
too. When your kitchen line is clogged, your kitchen sewage backs up to the
laundry sink because they are using one drain line
and the laundry sink is lower than kitchen sink. |
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| Toilet
Backs Up |
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If main
sewer is clogged, toilet will be backed up with the
tub or shower pan. But sometimes, you can see toilet
itself backing up without any relation with the tub
or shower pan. You need to clean the toilet P trap.
This P trap is clogged by unexpected stuffs like children’s
toy or other materials. Your strong and thick human
waste can be possibly the cause of clogging. |
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| Tub
Drain Backs Up |
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Major reason of clogging are
hair stocking except main sewer line clogging. If you clean
the rag in the tub, the debris of it will stock in the tub
drain and the cause of clogging. There
is no chemical to remove hair or rag debris. You need to remove the hair
by the snake.
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following picture is showing the hairs after snake |
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| Shower
Drain Backs Up |
| Shower
drain is clogged by hair except main sewer line backing up.
There is no chemical to remove the hair except snake. If there
is any chemical to melt hair, it will remove the pipe itself.
Also, I am recommending not to clean the rag at the shower
pan. If you clean the rag at the shower pan, your shower
drain will be clogged immediately. |
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| The
below picture is showing the hair after snake. |
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| Slow
Lavatory |
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Most of lavatories are clogged by the grease and the hair.
Even you use soapy water only, grease is built up. Snake will be
done like purple arrow mark in the following picture but if your lavatory is back
to back like the picture (there are two lavatories between
the wall), you
need to pull both P trap to snake without breaking of next
side P trap.
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If you try to snake back to back vanity without removing the
P trap, the
snake cable will go to directly instead of going down because
of it’s tension and brake the next P trap. So you need to put cable to the downward by
the hand. |
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| This
picture is showing the downward cable after pull the both side
P trap. |
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