Shower Clogged Nightmare

[William Thompson]

Years of neglect has caused a nightmare situation. For some reason a family member did not call my attention to the fact that the main bathroom show and tub of the house was not draining properly. I imagine hair and soap residue has built up. Now, when I ask him, he says as he tries to take a shower the water in the tub fills up to his ankles.

What I think I should do is get one of those thin plastic pipe snakes and see if I can twist and pull out the nightmarish mass of hair. But I thought I would first make this post and see what what kind of response this forum will suggest.

 

[Geofd]

1sy thing to do is, with the tub completely drained turn on the water in the sink, wait a minute or two and see if water starts backing up in your tub, if it does snake the drain thru the sink drain

If its just the tub remove the overflow plate and linkage put a wet rag in the overflow tightly....then plunge away, don't forget to clean, and remove the tub strainer also

 

[William Thompson]

1sy thing to do is, with the tub completely drained turn on the water in the sink, wait a minute or two and see if water starts backing up in your tub, if it does snake the drain thru the sink drain

If its just the tub remove the overflow plate and linkage put a wet rag in the overflow tightly....then plunge away, don't forget to clean, and remove the tub strainer also

I think your advice is the best advice !

By the way, I found this graphic to understand how the pipes work and I thought I would share it here for other DIY's.

 

[RickFlorida]

If the clog is from the tub.....I actually just had the deepest clog I've ever had on my house about 4 months ago. I guess I have been lucky but I had a clog that required about 15 feet or maybe 18 feet of those hand held drain snakes. I could tell around 18 feet maybe 15 feet in the clog was cleared (it helps to have the tub full of water so you know when you clear the clog. But always go past it in case it's more. After 25 feet (the limit of my cheap snake), I coiled it back up and it took a bunch of hair out stuck on the tip. I was so relieved I did not have to pay a professional. They would have charged 3 or 400 dollars I'm guessing for where I live.

What a lot of people don't know is you drop the snake down the overflow (remove the cover). You don't drop the snake from the basin drain. (I didn't know this until rather recently as I never had a clog this bad). By dropping it down the overflow, it more naturally goes down the drain and works well just spinning and feeding the snake.

 

[William Thompson]

I jammed a cheap plastic snake down the drain a few times to pull out some hair and eventually this fixed it.