Blocked Drain.

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
I've been (partially) dealing with a blocked drain for someone today - it's all seemed quite odd.

The blockage is in the wastepipe from a sink - it can be located to a 15' foot section of 40mm waste-pipe, largely hidden from view and with those hideous glued elbows, two at one end and three at the other, so access for rodding is problematic.

One of these Monument 12' "unblockers " was available and it has been run through to its full length - twice - from each end - but without pulling out much debris, mostly just dislodging a bit of 'sand'.

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I suspect we're dealing with a conglomerate of cooled grease and soil debris from cleaning vegetables - solid enough to block the flow from a 2' head, but too weak for the 'rod' to pull or push from its location.

We managed to create a hole through it that would allow the sink to drain and a sinkful of hot water did seem to then erode the hole a bit - time will tell - it will either get worse or better...

A (horrible) future possibility is to cut off one of the glued elbows and fit a swept-tee there - for a rodding point, but it's in a very inaccessible location.
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
If you can access from both ends, can you block one and fill it with hot water?

I have a jet wash attachment that works great, think you're a little far away to pop round though?
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
If you can access from both ends, can you block one and fill it with hot water?

I have a jet wash attachment that works great, think you're a little far away to pop round though?
The "accessible points" are both in very awkward places and indoors - the potential for backfiring is huge.

One* is at arm's length in the far corner of an undersink cupboard in an upstairs kitchen, the other is just below the ceiling in a downstairs room and almost as difficult to get at.

I did fill the sink with about four litres of boiled water, after I had achieved a small hole though the blockage - running that through did seem to improve the flow a little bit.

At one point, we did seem to have improved matters a great deal, after we had blocked the overflow vent and plunged the water in the sink - however, the increased flow was just because we had blown the overflow pipe off...

I think the gently sloping pipe has a good supply of grease/sand mixture lying on the bottom and it just slides down to block any aperture that does occur in the 'slug'.


*This is the one that I may end up cutting off for access - we'll see - it is not easy. Compression fittings would make it all so much easier...
 

Cue

Well-Known Forumite
I’ve always found the small black bottles with the blue or orange (blue for bathroom, orange for kitchen sink) caps pretty good. They seem to nicely deal with our regularly blocking shower drain
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
It's had (at least) a couple of chemical attacks before I got roped in, without any significant success.

The fact that it has a slow seep through may be part of the problem? Maybe the 'stuff' gets through the block on the slight slope before it can have much effect on the bulk of the material?
 

Cue

Well-Known Forumite
It's had (at least) a couple of chemical attacks before I got roped in, without any significant success.

The fact that it has a slow seep through may be part of the problem? Maybe the 'stuff' gets through the block on the slight slope before it can have much effect on the bulk of the material?
Has a cleaner with solids in been tried? The kitchen plug hole stuff is crystals rather than fluid
 

Noah

Well-Known Forumite
You can get devices which blast air down the pipe. Fit the appropriate size cap on the end, pump them up, put the cap over the plug hole and pull the trigger. Might shift the muck
 

Cue

Well-Known Forumite
You can get devices which blast air down the pipe. Fit the appropriate size cap on the end, pump them up, put the cap over the plug hole and pull the trigger. Might shift the muck
Oh yeah that’s a point, a wet/dry vac might work too.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
You can get devices which blast air down the pipe. Fit the appropriate size cap on the end, pump them up, put the cap over the plug hole and pull the trigger. Might shift the muck
Yeah, that's what blew the overflow pipe off.

It sounded like a great success, until we spotted that the water was coming out of the cupboard under the sink...
 

dirtboxin

Well-Known Forumite
have the same problem with my bath drain Gram no blockage from ubend to plug hole slow drainage from pipe off ubend to oiutside drain all glued joints. tried the shrink wrap one for blocked toilet worked a treat
 
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