Up sh*t creek...

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4spdragtop said:
Have you talked to the neighbours?? Maybe they have a similar problem? If so it might not even be "your problem". Wtih all municipalities I have worked for, it is the home owners responsibility to the curbstop for water, and the property line for wastewater. Plug could be down stream from your "responsibility" Good luck.
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That was actually my first thought. The city has been doing a LOT of sewer work in my area. Problem is, all of my neighbors know we have a clog, but none of them seem to have one as well. My wife looked it up online, and we can call our city sewer works and have them come out and check the city line to make sure it's not clogged where it meets our lateral. If it is, they will clean it out for free. If not, back to the drawing board.
 
65LoveAffair said:
That was actually my first thought. The city has been doing a LOT of sewer work in my area. Problem is, all of my neighbors know we have a clog, but none of them seem to have one as well. My wife looked it up online, and we can call our city sewer works and have them come out and check the city line to make sure it's not clogged where it meets our lateral. If it is, they will clean it out for free. If not, back to the drawing board.
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Well if they have been doing a LOT of sewer work, they MAY have done something so that it now flows slower out of your house. Call them have them look at it. Try to be there when they come by. If you are home and its nothing that they did wrong, maybe ask them if they have a snake to borrow? Or ask one of the workers if he would drop by after hours and do it??We lent them out all the time to the residents.
Ohhh kinda outside the box here, but if you can get them to snake it and they are going to charge you, just ask them if they could put it on your tax bill??

Good luck.
 
4spdragtop said:
Well if they have been doing a LOT of sewer work, they MAY have done something so that it now flows slower out of your house. Call them have them look at it. Try to be there when they come by. If you are home and its nothing that they did wrong, maybe ask them if they have a snake to borrow? Or ask one of the workers if he would drop by after hours and do it??We lent them out all the time to the residents.
Ohhh kinda outside the box here, but if you can get them to snake it and they are going to charge you, just ask them if they could put it on your tax bill??

Good luck.
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some good info coming in here now. don`t give up, break the plug out of the floor drain, just try not to mess the threads up too bad. you can always get a pvc plug for it. been plumbing for 43 yrs, never have seen a floor drain that wasn`t supposed to be hooked to the drain lines.have done modular comm buildings (for 15 of those yrs.)that went all over the u.s. , including mich., and all of them were to pass code in each state, all f.d.`s were hooked up to the drain system. grandpa may have been a jack of all trades, most were, and pretty smart too, but he may have not been a plumber. not bad mouthing him here! I have really ran in to some screwy stuff done by some people doing there own plbg. some of it even worked, it`s not rocket science by any means, or i wouldn`t be doing it. and by the way, they used to kick kitchen sink drains out of the house seperately then tie them in to the sewer yard line, possibly he might have done that--------bob
 
Its code in Michigan that the floor drains are part of the sanitary sewer system.
 
Maybe if you could post a picture of exactly what we're talkin about it will help.....
 
RustyRatRod said:
Maybe if you could post a picture of exactly what we're talkin about it will help.....
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Ask and ye shall receive...

That in the red circle is the clean out plug that I've been trying to remove. Sorry about the crappy (no pun intended) contrast. Everything in there is pretty much rust orange, now that we've washed most of the other color away.

I am led to believe that wherever this clog actually is, it's quite a ways away from this drain. If we don't use any water for a while, like overnight, in the morning we can flush or brush our teeth (if we do it quick) and we're fine. Eventually, the water draining will hit that clog and back up, but it usually takes a couple minutes (or a few toilet flushes right in a row) for that to happen. It's not immediate. I'm really hoping it's not roots, but I'm beginning to think that may be what we're dealing with considering all the symptoms we're seeing and hearing.
 

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What about pulling the toilet and getting a power snake? That is the only spot there isn't a trap and it will be flowing directly to the main line.
 
Ok....so this is inside the floor drain itself. See, up to this point, that was not clear.....at least to my stupid ***. Ok.....what are those ears 180* from each other? Are there screws there? That's what I would attempt to remove next. Even if they are rusted all to hell, you can even drill those out and just remove the entire drain and just snake down it.
 
RustyRatRod said:
Ok....so this is inside the floor drain itself. See, up to this point, that was not clear.....at least to my stupid ***. Ok.....what are those ears 180* from each other? Are there screws there? That's what I would attempt to remove next. Even if they are rusted all to hell, you can even drill those out and just remove the entire drain and just snake down it.
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Those ears are to attach the cover/screen.
 
Oklacarcollecto said:
Those ears are to attach the cover/screen.
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What he said. The lid for the floor drain sits on those. It's just held down by gravity.

I just called the city, and they are sending a truck out to check the main sewer line to see if our blockage is on their side of the system. My fingers are crossed, but I'm not holding my breath. Even if it's not on their side, at least we'll have eliminated that from the equation, and it won't cost us anything to do it. My luck we'd spend hundreds (or thousands) that we don't have, only to find out it was a stupid blockage on the city's side that we could have had removed for free.
 
Well, the city guys just left, and as I figured it wasn't on their end. They said they had actually just run this line recently from a nearby street and it's all clean. (Clean being a relative term.) It was his opinion that we are dealing with tree roots. yay...
 
65LoveAffair said:
Unfortunately, the plug IS iron. Or at least steel, but I'm betting iron. In any case, it's magnetic, so that rules brass out. I've been hitting it with PB Blaster and then a BFH and a cold chisel, but so far all I'm doing is putting some nice gouges in the plug and not much else. As far as finding where the pipe exits the house, that might be easier said than done. We've got a concrete porch on the front of the house and most likely it exits the house under that porch. I would imagine we could probably dig up my wife's flower bed in front of the porch and see what we can find. We have to be careful, though, because our water line comes in right about in the same area as well. About how far down would it be buried? Thanks for the pointers!
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Got a torch, or even a heat gun? If so, this is what I needed to get my 50+ year old (also iron cap on iron pipe) clean-out open: heat it with the torch, then quench it with penetrating oil. Do have a fire extinguisher handy when you do this! Let it cool, repeat. Took me 3 tries, but when I was done, it spun right off.

For reassembly, I wire-wheeled it to get all the rust off, spray-painted it with Rust-oleum, and coated the threads with (A-body relevance coming!) Mopar bearing grease. :) 9 years later...I put a wrench on it, gave it a tug, and it spun right off!
 
Oklacarcollecto said:
You said you only had a 20' snake... Get a longer snake... a power snake with a cutter head would be best.
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sounds like it`s out in the yard, go rent a sewer machine, be careful don`t feed a lot of cable where it can flip around and grab u, wear heavy leather gloves--no cotton or such gloves---
like I said before get in to the main line coming out of ur house regardless of what it comes out from under, cut a hole in it big enough for the snake to go thru, go both ways till u hit the clog, then patch the hole. as some stated before a double clean-out tee would be the best, but could be a lot of trouble for some one inexperianced w/ that sort of thing---good luck
 
65LoveAffair said:
Well, here's a little update. I kept hitting it with PB Blaster, let it sit, and then attacked it with a large pipe wrench and a breaker bar about 3 feet long. I thought I felt it give, but when I looked it was still in the same spot. I looked closer, and saw that one of the corners of the square part the wrench grips on had crumbled away. Now I can't even get purchase with the pipe wrench anymore.

:banghead: :violent1: :banghead: :violent1: :banghead:

I think I'm going to throw in the towel. I talked to my mom, and I think she's going to loan us the money for a plumber. I don't want to screw anything else up. I've gotten some recommendations for plumbers down here from a couple of people. One of them was even mentioned by a couple people, so that's probably where we'll go. Thanks everyone for all the help. I think when our money situation eases a little, I'm going to go ahead and find the line in the yard and install a clean out that I can access outside.
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Got a Dremel? What I did at my mother's house (after a previous owner attacked the clean-out with Channel-Lock knockoffs and rounded it)--get your biggest open-end wrench, cover the end with blue tape (if you care about not getting paint on it). Center it on the square thing, and hit it with a quick shot of orange spray paint. Using the Dremel, grind away anything that isn't painted.

When finished, slide the wrench on, and give it a good yank!
 
65LoveAffair said:
What he said. The lid for the floor drain sits on those. It's just held down by gravity.

I just called the city, and they are sending a truck out to check the main sewer line to see if our blockage is on their side of the system. My fingers are crossed, but I'm not holding my breath. Even if it's not on their side, at least we'll have eliminated that from the equation, and it won't cost us anything to do it. My luck we'd spend hundreds (or thousands) that we don't have, only to find out it was a stupid blockage on the city's side that we could have had removed for free.
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While they are out there, ask um nice if they will scope out your deal. When they were pavin our road shortly after we moved in out here, I went down and asked what it'd take to cut us another driveway. 15 minutes later, it was done. And I mean about a 300' driveway through the woods. All we had to do was clean up the trees and brush. They refused to take one red cent.
 
RustyRatRod said:
While they are out there, ask um nice if they will scope out your deal. When they were pavin our road shortly after we moved in out here, I went down and asked what it'd take to cut us another driveway. 15 minutes later, it was done. And I mean about a 300' driveway through the woods. All we had to do was clean up the trees and brush. They refused to take one red cent.
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Post 63 over an hour ago.... come and gone.
 
I have over 1500 feet of main lines and used to have to call a plumber about once a year but I have never had to call a plumber since I bought my Drain King. I would pull the toilet, get below any other connections and get a Drain King after it. If you don't get below the other connections it may blow a hole in the side of the Drain King.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6eDoRgTyXc"]Drain King vs. Comp - YouTube[/ame]

There is a reason I say Drain King.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBjArQUQPEQ"]Does It Work ?? Drain Bladders - YouTube[/ame]

I do have a power snake but it has been used once since I bought it over 10 years ago and then it was because there is a spot I can't get the Drain King in to. Someday I will put a long turn wye in that location so it will fit there too.

BTW, several plumbers around here use Drain Kings too.
 
X2 ^^ Drain kings work. They hook to a hose and swell up when you turn on the water. It then shoots a strong stream of water to the clog. If it's tree roots you will have to keep clearing the line until you replace it. Attack the plug and gain the access you need.
 
Make sure not to pop that clean out cap off when the water is backed up. I got a few stories involving using a trash can lid as a shield and a fountain of poop erupting when that cap comes off.

Do what everyone is saying and get the longest snake you can find or call a plumber. If the clog isn't fixed with the longest snake you can find then I would say it's time to start digging.
 
That Drain King looks like it's the shizzle.
 
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