Larry Williams
New Member
Hello all -
I've got an ongoing problem that I'm hoping somebody on this forum will be familiar with. I began noticing this problem when I started getting those dreaded drain flies in the laundry room. In this laundry room, there is a floor drain (the lowest point of my split level home) that is connected to the sanitary sewer line going to the street. The laundry floor drain consistently gets back-flow from the upstairs toilet (the floor above the laundry room). The upstairs toilet expels water through a gravity fed drain pipe going down vertically and then turns horizontally. When the waste water makes that horizontal turn and passes through the what I'm assuming is a Wye connector under the concrete that connects the upstairs piping with the floor drain, some of the waste water back-flows into the floor drain trap. I see shreds of toilet paper in the bottom of the floor trap after I flush upstaris. I've never had the floor drain back up to the point where sewage was all over the laundry floor. Anyhow, when I dump clean water down the floor drain, that pushes the sewage out of the trap and into the line going to the street with no problems. The trouble is that I have to do this every week or else drain flies start breeding in the sewage just sitting there at the top of the trap. The trap holds an ample amount of water so I'm pretty sure the trap isn't broken and I've checked it over a few days to make sure there wasn't a slow leak.
I have had 3 plumbers come out and none of them could tell me what the issue is. They had done a camera inspection in the cleanout in the front yard and the waste water was exiting properly - no roots or anything. Just to cover my bases, I had them rod all the lines but they didn't come across a clog. It's this annoying situation of back-flow into the floor drain that is causing me to lose my sanity. I installed a green drain rubber one way check valve on top the drain which keeps gases out and any drain flies out but hoping for more of a long term solution.
Hoping someone can shed some light on what in the world my problem might be.
I've got an ongoing problem that I'm hoping somebody on this forum will be familiar with. I began noticing this problem when I started getting those dreaded drain flies in the laundry room. In this laundry room, there is a floor drain (the lowest point of my split level home) that is connected to the sanitary sewer line going to the street. The laundry floor drain consistently gets back-flow from the upstairs toilet (the floor above the laundry room). The upstairs toilet expels water through a gravity fed drain pipe going down vertically and then turns horizontally. When the waste water makes that horizontal turn and passes through the what I'm assuming is a Wye connector under the concrete that connects the upstairs piping with the floor drain, some of the waste water back-flows into the floor drain trap. I see shreds of toilet paper in the bottom of the floor trap after I flush upstaris. I've never had the floor drain back up to the point where sewage was all over the laundry floor. Anyhow, when I dump clean water down the floor drain, that pushes the sewage out of the trap and into the line going to the street with no problems. The trouble is that I have to do this every week or else drain flies start breeding in the sewage just sitting there at the top of the trap. The trap holds an ample amount of water so I'm pretty sure the trap isn't broken and I've checked it over a few days to make sure there wasn't a slow leak.
I have had 3 plumbers come out and none of them could tell me what the issue is. They had done a camera inspection in the cleanout in the front yard and the waste water was exiting properly - no roots or anything. Just to cover my bases, I had them rod all the lines but they didn't come across a clog. It's this annoying situation of back-flow into the floor drain that is causing me to lose my sanity. I installed a green drain rubber one way check valve on top the drain which keeps gases out and any drain flies out but hoping for more of a long term solution.
Hoping someone can shed some light on what in the world my problem might be.