Intermittant floor drain clog

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jafriede

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Please forgive the long story. Just want to get all the info out.....

My basement has a toilet, two floor drains, and a drain pipe for the washer. They all converge (at one point I assume) into the main stack. One of the floor drains has a shower stall over it. In the past I have had to snake hair out of the drain under the shower, but no major problems.

Now my house is sold. The buyers had a sewer inspection done earlier this month and everything came out OK. The inspector ran a camera in the main sewer line out to the city hookup. Last week, after my wife took a shower, water had backed up under the shower stall, the other floor drain in the middle of the room was backed up, and if you flushed the toilet, water came up out of the floor drain. I called the same company that did the inspection for the buyers. He came out and of course everything was working by then.

Since the run to the city hookup is about 90', he opened the cleanout plug on the main stack and had me turn the bathtub on upstairs. You could visually see that the water was flowing just fine. We left that on for about 15min. Then he used his power auger on the lines from the two floor drains. Also, we hooked up the rubber bladder that I had to a garden hose and let them run a while to flush everything out.

All was good. Now my wife just called me this morning and said the drain backed up again but seems to have cleared itself already. I have lived in this house for 13 years and never had this problem. Any ideas?

Thanks!
 

Redwood

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Have you had the city check their line?
Quite often if there is a restriction in their line the lowest house before the restriction gets it. I'd have that checked ASAP before a complete blockage happens. Peak flows would be morning and evening.
 

jafriede

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No I haven't. I'm trying to catch it in the act again to see if the blockage is before the main stack. Since the upstairs bathroom empties right into it I should be able to tell. My neighbors haven't had any problems either.

Update:

Just called the City today. They have no reported problems but will check it out. We are not the last house on the line either.
 
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Redwood

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Snaking from the floor drain is not going to be effective nor is the blow bag.

I'm starting to think you might need a different drain cleaning company...

Something is wrong somewhere...
If the camera revealed no line problem then???

Either they were looking in the wrong place.
They missed seeing the problem.
Or, the city line is the problem...

This ain't rocket science!:cool:
 

Solsacre

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Trying to catch it in the act may be a messy game... You said cleanout on main stack so I'm guessing it's inside, but if it's outside? is it lower than the floor drain inside? You may want to pull it so if it backs up it will go out it instead of inside... but more importantly it will tell you if the problem is inside or outside... did they camera from there out or did they pull a toilet and camera the beginning of the system? It's definitely a main problem, but pinpointing it is now the game. find out exactly what was inspected, as you rule out options the only thing left is the answer.




dances with pumps
 
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