# Whats going on with my plumbing?



## madrina (Feb 21, 2013)

just went in my room and saw this...


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## madrina (Feb 21, 2013)

crap... saw this!


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## madrina (Feb 21, 2013)

ok apparently i cant post photos but underneath the toilet is all wet, underneath the laminate and padding... and a bunch of garbage is splattered all over my shower, like the drain threw up


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## Texas Wax (Jan 16, 2012)

Plumber is the quickest way.

Wanna DIY diagnose?

Need to find the clean out close to the slab. Usually within 3-4'. Covered by flower bedding. Likely standard 3-4" White PVC Clean out cap shows first when rooting around in the dirt. Pop the clean out cap and look inside. If there is little or no sewage flowing ... it's under the slab. Call plumber or rent 100' snake from the Home despot.

If the cleanout pipe is full, it's somewhere out in the yard to the main. Call the city to see if they'll pressure clean it. If not call a plumber or rent 100' snake. Make sure you get 'Cutter' ends either case.

If the obvious obstruction is right there under your eyes, use your best judgement :clap:

Oh yea if you find the clean out cap... LOL be careful, chit may not obey the runs downhill standard. It will after it gushes forth, a little.


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## Rio (Oct 13, 2009)

Lots of times for slab on grade homes the cleanout is in line more or less with the toilet.


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## dsconstructs (Jul 20, 2010)

Since no one else asked yet......you don't flush feminine products do you? Some houses it doesn't seem to effect much while others it's a time bomb. I had to snake one of my rentals twice in the same week, the second time it was obvious what the blockage was. Made a late night trip to my brothers last year for the same reason (darned neice was even flushing the applicator tubes) 
I don't even trust the "flushable" wipes, I've had to snake my mom's drain several times for those damn things. 
For regular business.....I just tell people to call a plumber that snakes drains.


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## Inner10 (Mar 12, 2009)

dsconstructs said:


> Since no one else asked yet......you don't flush feminine products do you? Some houses it doesn't seem to effect much while others it's a time bomb. I had to snake one of my rentals twice in the same week, the second time it was obvious what the blockage was. Made a late night trip to my brothers last year for the same reason (darned neice was even flushing the applicator tubes)
> I don't even trust the "flushable" wipes, I've had to snake my mom's drain several times for those damn things.
> For regular business.....I just tell people to call a plumber that snakes drains.


Found a few mice eh?


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## dsconstructs (Jul 20, 2010)

Inner10 said:


> Found a few mice eh?


Yep, hanging on to that snake for dear life.


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## madrina (Feb 21, 2013)

omg i have tilled up my entire front flower bed searching for this mf with a granny spoon. my hands are raw. i opened all the secondaries on the house, 2 on the side and one in the front and nada. the only other thing i found was a plastic oblong manhole cover thing in the bushes and of course the cover wasnt on right so i had to dig dig dig dig dig my god nothing is in there and my bushes are the ones with pointy leaves scratching me to death poking me every where in my fingers, arms and in my back.. i dug a foot of clay dirt out of that stupid thing with a sissy ass gardening shovel for old ladies, CROUCHED DOWN ON MY KNEES WITH MY chest on the ground and arm stretched out, butt up in the air under these frickin satan bushes and finally found a little red water knob thing but nothing else. hit my head on the damn window box every time i tried to get out from behind ther because apparently i cant remember its there! 

theres another square thing in the front yard close to the sidewalk and inside of it about a foot deep is some big metal thing with a shut off valve on each side of it and copper pipes... no clean out as of yet. 

finally i had to go borrow my neighbors husband and he went to the side of the house (i live on the corner) and found a little sewer manhole cover.. like 6 inches... in the sidewalk... and i snaked the hell out of it and nothing. it went like six feet deep and runs right under a big tree...but we got like 50 feet of tape in there and the closest bathroom is 30.. im thinking that wasnt the cleanout i was needing to clean out. 

if i have to go back behind those satan bushes again, im going to cut them all down and put fake ones there instead. lol fake potted plants. yes that would look great.


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## hdavis (Feb 14, 2012)

FWIW, a bunch of the 70s houses in your general area had the main line run under the slab between the kitchen and baths. You should be able to figure it out from where your toilets and vent stacks are. They had a PVC clean out outside bricked in a foot or so off the ground in the vicinity of the kitchen if there is a half bath near the kitchen. No digging. 

They pretty much design the plumbing so it plugs 55' from the main clean out, so you have to use a 75' sewer auger. Probably on larger houses they go for the 80' clog.

Take a look at your floor plan. The main lines will be within 6' of the toilets, so check along the outside wall within 6' of the toilets.


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## 91782 (Sep 6, 2012)

I've never looked for a cleanout. On my new homes, I got one at each level, sometimes two, plus the antibackup flapper in the basement slab.

These are so easy to snake once you get beyond perceptions.

All stools ALL OF THEM are only held in place by two bolts and the water supply line. They are almost always the most direct route out of the house - meaning the one with the fewest bends.

So you shut off the supply, flush the stool, suck the remaining water out of the tank and trap (so you don't dribble it everywhere), then have a friend help you unbolt and set it to one side (or the next room if you need the space to work.

NOW you have the best access to the main waste trunk, all the way out to the street.

*NOTE: While you got that stool out - check the built-in trap. More than one blockage I've dealt with was right there in the trap - a dropped pocket comb, a harmonica, a vinyl lizard...*

Pick up a new wax ring with bolt kit included, a new braided steel flexi-line (or grey vinyl if you are a cheap-arse like me), and run that power auger all the way to the edge of Texas if need be.

I would regale you with stories of bizarre pluggages from both my airport days and my sales model/office days (when a certain pair of boys wondered if they could jam our crapper), but this is not the time.

Maybe in 5 minutes tho...


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## madrina (Feb 21, 2013)

im trying to upload the blueprints but it aint working.

davis, thats exactly how my house is.. kitchen and half bath on the right side with the little really deep sewer line on the curb and 

front elevation has the secondary on the bricks and the black oval box in front of it with the red spicket in it and straight ahead to the curb is the green box with the 2 valves and on the curb is the water main.

theres nothing that sits a foot off the ground or bricked in around my house.. but the green box by the curb is bricked in underground


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## madrina (Feb 21, 2013)

ahhhh got it.. the pic to upload that is... but its pretty crappy.. hhha pun intended. ill take a better one if you cant read that. i know how old eyes are. yuk yuk yuk.. papa.


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## hdavis (Feb 14, 2012)

If you had one of the easy outside clean outs, it would normally be along the 4th bedroom outside wall toward the Kitchen from the half bath toilet. 4" PVC, but I trust you didn't miss it while you were tearing up the landscape.

Typically, the two full baths for bedrooms 1,2,3 are into a pipe that runs straight for the street, and the other half bath comes across over to it and Ys in. If you have both of the full baths backing up you can snake from the full bath closest to the street. It's easiest of you pull the flush, but you can run a 50' snake down the flush in place - just make sure you protect the porcelain or you'll get unsightly scratches.

I've also found clean outs in the vent pipe in the wall. I'd rather snake from a sink drain or yank a toilet than open a wall.


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## Jay hole (Nov 12, 2013)

Hire a guy with a camera. In one hour he will pinpoint the problem.


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## Rio (Oct 13, 2009)

Like STG said, if you pull the toilet you can snake down the main line from there. Like HD said, get the longest snake you can, maybe measure how far it is from the toilet to the center of the street (if that's where the sewer line is). 

A camera isn't a bad idea either, we just did a commercial project and the plumber wanted to use one to see what the existing line was like, owner didn't want to but the plumber insisted and sure enough, there was a screw up in the old existing cast iron main. It was almost 100 years old so no surprise but by finding it before the work was done it was easier to fix and the owner couldn't put it on the plumber.

Regarding the city water workers, if they were driving a big truck around on the grass or dirt they might have broken the line?


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## ninjaplumber (Jan 18, 2017)

madrina said:


> A few days ago the water company was out in front of my house and said they were shutting the water off for a while because there was air in the line. After they left, the first time I flushed the toilet, it made a loud gurgling sound. I didnt think anything about it besides it was probably because they had just been working on it. Then i noticed that the bathtub water wasnt draining. it stops about halfway and the toilet starts gurgling . Then the water starts draining again and the toilet gurgles the rest of the time. every toilet in the house fills up with water to the point it ALMOST overflows and then it stops and stays there for about ten minutes then drains out slowly to no water at all. today i was doing the dishes in the kitchen and my kid flushed the toilet in the bathroom closest to the kitchen and when i walked back there, water was all over the floor.
> 
> I have plunged and plunged and plunged and nothing seems to work. Can anyone tell me what the heck is going on?


Mainline.

Find a cleanout.

If no cleanout, accessible roof vent? 

Not even that?

Pull a toilet and cable to septic tank or service line connection.

Get through but still not draining? Jetter time. 

If that doesn't work, I would move, because it's probably a poltergeist. If you're lucky, it's the kind that stays in the house and not the kind that is attached to someone in your family.


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## madrina (Feb 21, 2013)

Tree roots.


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## madrina (Feb 21, 2013)

i snaked every hole in this house accept for my own and nada. Called the plumber. Came out at 10 pm and pulled a bunch of tree roots out of the sewer line on the side of the house from the sidewalk to the house. $210 thank you very much sir! i was glad to pay it. NOTE TO SELF, F PLUMBING.


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## 91782 (Sep 6, 2012)

Did you have him give you a quote on replacing that line?


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## J L (Nov 16, 2009)

SmallTownGuy said:


> Did you have him give you a quote on replacing that line?


Yeah, because tree roots just don't grow in sewer pipes. There has to be a break to allow them to get in, right? :whistling:laughing:


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## hdavis (Feb 14, 2012)

madrina said:


> i snaked every hole in this house accept for my own and nada. Called the plumber. Came out at 10 pm and pulled a bunch of tree roots out of the sewer line on the side of the house from the sidewalk to the house. $210 thank you very much sir! i was glad to pay it. NOTE TO SELF, F PLUMBING.


It'll clog again in a year or so. The roots will grow back in....


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## Texas Wax (Jan 16, 2012)

madrina said:


> Tree roots.


Ahh yup :thumbsup:

Did you have the plumber mark where the stoppage was, for future reference?


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## madrina (Feb 21, 2013)

SmallTownGuy said:


> Did you have him give you a quote on replacing that line?


He said someone could come out the next day and do it. but seeing how they ran the sewer line right underneath the biggest tree my house has, he said it would probably kill the tree. So an option was to run another line all the way across for like 6 grand. I said um, no thanks. ill just have you come back every year for 210 bucks.


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## Inner10 (Mar 12, 2009)

madrina said:


> He said someone could come out the next day and do it. but seeing how they ran the sewer line right underneath the biggest tree my house has, he said it would probably kill the tree. So an option was to run another line all the way across for like 6 grand. I said um, no thanks. ill just have you come back every year for 210 bucks.


They can also sleeve the pipe.


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## rrk (Apr 22, 2012)

madrina said:


> i snaked every hole in this house accept for my own and nada. Called the plumber. Came out at 10 pm and pulled a bunch of tree roots out of the sewer line on the side of the house from the sidewalk to the house. $210 thank you very much sir! i was glad to pay it. NOTE TO SELF, F PLUMBING.



$210 at 10 PM ??????????????????
Really??? I have to move. At 10 am the next day it's $350 and up, at 10 pm you are not getting that done for less than $600-700

Glad you found it, they will be back


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## Inner10 (Mar 12, 2009)

rrk said:


> $210 at 10 PM ??????????????????
> Really??? I have to move. At 10 am the next day it's $350 and up, at 10 pm you are not getting that done for less than $600-700
> 
> Glad you found it, they will be back


$600 when I had it done.

$15000 quote for pipe replacement, only a 12 foot run through hard.


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## hdavis (Feb 14, 2012)

madrina said:


> He said someone could come out the next day and do it. but seeing how they ran the sewer line right underneath the biggest tree my house has, he said it would probably kill the tree. So an option was to run another line all the way across for like 6 grand. I said um, no thanks. ill just have you come back every year for 210 bucks.


There is some foaming tree root killer that may delay getting it cleaned. It's worth looking into. The non-foaming doesn't do a great job...


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## tjbnwi (Feb 24, 2009)

madrina said:


> He said someone could come out the next day and do it. but seeing how they ran the sewer line right underneath the biggest tree my house has,


My guess is someone planted the tree over the sewer line...

Eventually you'll have to replace the line, the tree roots will destroy it. 

Tom


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## 91782 (Sep 6, 2012)

rrk said:


> $210 at 10 PM ??????????????????
> Really??? I have to move. At 10 am the next day it's $350 and up, at 10 pm you are not getting that done for less than $600-700
> 
> Glad you found it, they will be back


They don't make money in denominations large enough to get a plumber on a job after 4 PM around here.


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## hdavis (Feb 14, 2012)

tjbnwi said:


> My guess is someone planted the tree over the sewer line...
> 
> Eventually you'll have to replace the line, the tree roots will destroy it.
> 
> Tom


A lot of houses in the subdivisions around her have 2 trees in the front yard, one over or next to the sewer line.


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## 91782 (Sep 6, 2012)

hdavis said:


> A lot of houses in the subdivisions around her have 2 trees in the front yard, one over or next to the sewer line.


So Davis - what's the deal - you an ex-longhorn that got in trouble & had to leave the state - or just spent some time there sowing wild oats?


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## hdavis (Feb 14, 2012)

SmallTownGuy said:


> So Davis - what's the deal - you an ex-longhorn that got in trouble & had to leave the state - or just spent some time there sowing wild oats?


I've been all over. East, West, North, South, I pretty much like it all.:thumbsup:

Texas summers really beat me up on outside work.


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## 91782 (Sep 6, 2012)

hdavis said:


> I've been all over. East, West, North, South, I pretty much like it all.:thumbsup:
> 
> Texas summers really beat me up on outside work.


Imma candy-ass - never did handle the heat well.


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## hdavis (Feb 14, 2012)

SmallTownGuy said:


> Imma candy-ass - never did handle the heat well.


I handled it fine until I didn't.


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