Please Help!!!

My wife and I recently purchase our firt home (a condo actually). We are on the top floor (4 floors). Since moving in our tub drain has gurgled when we flush our toilet. We have notified our strata management compnay who have tried to both snake the stack vent on the roof as well as have it blown out with a high pressure hot water hose of some type. Well the gurgling has only gotten louder. The appartment below us has no such problem with her plumbing. I have no idea what is going on. Everything I read tells me that its a stack vent but i am wondering if there could be another cause. Any suggestions would really be appreciated.

Mike

speedball1

Hi Mike,
A "bubble" indicates a clogged line while a "gurgle" indicates a blocked vent. let me explain. When you flush the discharge drains down the pipe untill it hits a partial clog. Then it rebounds back sending a "bubble" of air ahead of it. When you flush a toilet or drain a bathtub a suction is created by the water rushing down the pipe. This suction is relieved by a open pipe that runs to the outside called a vent. When a vent's stopped up the suction has to relieve itself somwhere, in this case your tub. The noise you hear is the air being pulled through the trap by suction, (gurgle).
So your problem is a vent problem and the management company hasn't reached the clog yet. Did they snake from the lavatory vent that services your bathroom group or just snake out the main stack. If that's all they snaked out then they snaked the wrong stack. good luck and keep me informed. Tom

czuboka

Hi Tom

Thanks a lot for your reply. I am sure it is a venting issue as I tired pluging the drain with the stopper and holding my hand over the overflow vent to see if there was air getting pulled in when I flush.... there is, a lot of air. I know that the guys were on the roof snaking the stack vent but I was not aware that there were multiple vents. From what the management is telling me, all the apartments in my section of the building share a stack. Actually 4 all together that come out on the roof. According to them they have not only snaked all of them but also use this high pressure water hose. They say they did hit a block at one point but got past it and cleared the vent. This has only made it worse. Is there a different place that this "Laveratory vent" needs to be accessed from? Is it possible that in a condo individual appartments vents branch of from a main vent, and in the process of clearing the main vent they have plugged more stuff into mine?

Thanks again.

Mike

serialwife

My husband an I had the exact same problem in our apartment. It kept getting louder. Eventually our tub wouldn't drain and the washer backed up in the tub. They had to snake the vent. They ended up pulling out what the plumber said was tree roots. Since they cleared it the gurgle stopped.

czuboka

Hi Serial Wife

You says your drain was glogged and not the vent? Interesting. Thanks for your input.

speedball1

serialwifes problem's not the same as yours. She didn't have a "gurgle" she hada backup. Hers was a blocked drain while yours is a blocked vent.
"From what the management is telling me, all the apartments in my section of the building share a stack.

"Is there a different place that this "Laveratory vent" needs to be accessed from?"

This is called reventing, where you connect other vents into one pipe that goes out the roof. I have run into this situation many times and there's only one way to be surethat it's your vent being cleared. You must go into the attic and locate the vent that services your bathroom. then you must cut into that vent and snake the open pipe. There is no other way to do this.

"According to them they have not only snaked all of them but also use this high pressure water hose. They say they did hit a block at one point but got past it and cleared the vent. This has only made it worse."

What they did was to blow the clog farther into your system with the hose.
They attempted a "quick fix" with the pressure hose that failed. Call them back and have them snake out the vent that services your bathroom.
good luck and keep me informed. Tom

czuboka

Thanks so much Speedball. I will pass this information along to my Strata Management Company. I wish they had just got a plumber in there in the first place. Anyhow I truely appreciate the input, I will let you know what transpires.

Mike

Madam Goodwrench

Was searching for an answer to another problem and landed on this one.....just this past Sunday my husband power washed the garage floor - laundry room/garage share a common wall, garage floor has drain in center (hse. plans do not indicate where it goes) - after he finished I began filing the washing machine and heard glub, glub, glub...coming from inside the laundry tub...and then noticed the water was dirty!! We've been in our hse. 30 yrs. new laundry added 20 yrs. ago - NEVER had such a problem. Waste from machine is flex into PVC pipe going down into slab. Garage floor is 18" lower than ldry. floor....where to begin?

speedball1

Madam Goodwrench,

Sounds like when hubby hosed off the floors he washed a lot of dirt and debris down the floor drain and now you have it blocking the drain downstream from the laundry tray. The solution would be to snake the drain from the washer roof vent or the washers standpipe. Test by cycling the washer. good luck, tom

critt001

Ok - new here...inaugural post!

I consider myself pretty handy 'round the house. I'm usually able to troubleshoot, fix, install, build, or sub out whatever needs doing. So, when the tub next the the commode in our master bath began to gurgle with flush, I was amazed at what I found when I Googled "Tub gurgles with flush"!

So - my general symptoms sound very similar to initial poster czuboka. I'm in a single fam home on well/septic. The bathroom in question is on the main floor with relatively easy attic access. Commode sees regular use. Tub rarely gets used (so no hair/scum buildup there). Here's what I've done thus far (in chronological order):

1. Run some water into tub after flush to re-create water seal...(gurgle persists)
2. Replace toilet tank flapper. Thought issue may be related to poor seal or flapper timing...(gurgle persists)
3. Closet auger to toilet. Though I didn't suspect a clog I do have two small children who could have potentially put something in the toilet...(gurgle persists)
4. With borrowed wire snake I went to the roof to inspect vent stack outlet. No nests, clogs, or dead animals found. No blockages found with snaking (though I could only pass about 10-12' of line in - with 90 degree bends in vent pipe). I then went up in attic and cut through vent stack and snaked there, too. With cut pipe end exposed I had a helper (my 4 year old) flush the commode in question. I could clearly hear water flush and could easily feel draw of air from pipe end (indicating no vent stack clog?)....(gurgle persists)
5. Phone call to plumber who installed fixtures 5 yrs ago - he recommended "Thrift" drain cleaner to tub drain. Thrift purchased and seemed to do the trick for about a day - then...(gurgle persists).

So what to do now? I'm not out much money (thankfully toilet parts and PVC are cheap), but something is clearly amiss. I'll use the rest of the "Thrift on the two sinks in the Master Bath, but I don't hold out much hope that that'll fix it. I also plan on replacing the toilet tank innards with the thought that tub gurgles 'cause fill valve isn't working or flapper valve isn't closing in a timely manner.

Sorry for the long post - but wanted to be as descriptive as possible.

Thanks...