Moved into a house recently. Finally really happy to have a washer. On the rinse cycle it overflows onto the basement floor through the vent in the floor. Maintenance guy came over today and says it is probably lint clogging the line. He pours a quart of lime into the pipe that the washer drains into. The tells me if that doesn't work I should try to go to some hardware store and buy some acid and put that in the drain. Of course it didn't work. Should I try the acid thing? Or should we just look into snaking it? (Or having them snake it?) I have one of these maintence people that probably wouldn't want to snake it unless everything else had been tried.

As long as you know that the drain gravity feeds out to the municipal sewer drain in the street, yes, you should have it snaked. If it is not gravity fed to the municipal sewer drain in the street. Get back to me. You can find out by asking the city or county official who are in the building department. Or ask a neighbor who has been there for a long time. They may know. Would you like to see an article I wrote about main line sewer drains? It is not quite the same but I think the information may be useful. http://www.plumbinglessons.com/sup/mainline.htm