A few days ago our kitchen sink went from fine to not draining. Well - drains reeeally slowly. In the morning if you run water for more than 30 seconds it'll back up. The weird thing is that if you run for a while and back up the drain, if you turn on the disposal it runs down just fine.

It's a single sink with a disposal. The dishwasher drains into the disposal as well. To go in search of a possible clog, I took the p-trap off and found it clean. I poured a cup of water into the sink when this was disconnected and the cup of water came through immediately. I've stuck my hand down there and the disposal feels clean and there is no material. I've even run 25 feet of snake down this line twice and found nothing. Finally I poured a bottle of the liquid plumber down the drain but it's not doing anything (just poured it an hour ago). I've plugged the disposal drain and plunged this thing like crazy.

I'm glad it drains when the disposal is running but what the heck? I'm baffled.

The disposal somewhat forces the water down. Sounds like your sink isn't vented properly or the water would just come back up in the sink when you turn the disposal off, but that's another story. The only way to cure the problem is to run a snake further down the drain. You say it takes about thirty seconds of running water before it backs up, this tells me that the clog is pretty far down the drain. You can never run too much snake(to a certain extent) Try running 30 or even fouty foot of cable and see if your problem is fixed. You may even look for a clean out below floor of sink. Please let me know what you find.

Thanks for the response. Yeah - I should go buy a longer snake. I'm hoping to avoid calling roto rooter. Yes, I'll def post when we figure out what's wrong or fix it.

You can just rent the auger if you like.


Here is a pic of a small drain auger, there are many different styles.

Sounds like you have a clog in the drai9n bin the wall. Take the Trap apart and run a snake up into the wall,(see image) You'll run into a elbo about 8" in but once around you only have about 6 more feet to run out.
Lee gave you the image of a sewer machine. That's a wee bit too large for this job. Use a hand held snake or a hand held power one, (see image).
Good luck and thank you for rating my answer. Tom

I'm just excited. Just learned how to post pics. The homeowner said they have already run 25 foot of snake. I guess as a plumber, I just don't like the dinky little hand snakes. We always use power augers, little (as posted, although not this exact one) and big. The above pic is only a 1/2 inch cable. Great for thoughouly cleaning the drain.(1 1/4 to two inch drains). But they do take some experience to run. These little babies can wrap you up in a heartbeat. I just posted this auger as an example. We use rigid machines, with 7 1/2 foot connecting cables(small drains) and 15 foot connecting cables for large drains. Never have liked the spool machines with one long cable, but that just me and what I was brought up on.

You would have to remove tail of trap going into wall to use the power auger that I suggested. If you don't want to remove that, then I would definitely go with a hand or power hand as speedball suggested.

I just think that if you have already run 25 foot of hand snake, and you are still plugged, then it may be time for a larger tool. The hand ones get a little tough to use when getting out at these distances. There is a chance that the snake is taking a wrong turn and going up a vent instead of going down the drain. Maybe try the twenty five footer again.

Uggh. Just got back from the hardware store with 50' of snake and a master plunger. My wife was astonished by the plunger and I let her help out. She was having a blast plunging so I let her do that a few times. (She's a student and deep in her studies but really, really needs to get out more. :)) It did seem to have some incredible pressure.

After doing this a few times, I took over, pulled the P-trap off and somehow convinced all 50' of the snake down the drain. I had some struggles getting it down but I think that was more about bends in the pipes than blockages. I then pulled it all out. I don't have any experience beyond today's attempts but I don't think I got anything. Still, after pulling it back out I was still hoping, hoping, hoping it would be better. I ran the water and well, it's better - more like rather slow instead of extremely slow. It still backs up if I run the water constantly but I can see it draining.

I think I'm going to call it a day's work. It's exhausting work. I have a few other chores to get to so am going to put this on hold until tomorrow. I'm not sure if this is too optimistic but I want to see if this slightly increased flow will wash whatever is in there out.

Thanks, everyone, for the advice (and pics!) everyone. I'm really grateful for this active board! I think I'm on the right track now. I'll be checking back and will let you know what happens.

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I pulled the P-trap off and somehow convinced all 50' of the snake down the drain. I had some struggles getting it down but I think that was more about bends in the pipes than blockages

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You put 50 foot of cable into a 5foot lateral drain? No wonder you had a tough time. What you've done is to run into the sanitary tee about 5 foot from the trap and your snake either turned and went up the stack or turned and went down it.
Your lateral's clean. If you still have a clog you will have send a snake down the kitchen roof vent.Now you can rent a sewer machine like the one Dad put up. Put out enough snake to reach the base and 20 feet more. The problem with snaking from the trap is after you hit the sanitary tee you never know which war the snake will turn. Lrt me know how you make out. Tom

To "mygirlsdad77" - Can I ask you more about your initial comment about venting? It is doing what you say. If there is just a bit of water in the sink and I turn on the disposal just briefly then the water goes down but then comes right back up. I think you're on to something. If this was venting before but the venting isn't working anymore how can I check this? Besides ripping out the wall, of course.

Hello ddawSon,

You don't need ripping the wall just follow Tom's and mygirlsdad instructions, feed your snake down the kitchen roof vent, Put out enough snake to reach the base and 20 feet more, good luck.

John

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Originally Posted by ddawson100

to "mygirlsdad77" - Can I ask you more about your initial comment about venting? It is doing what you say. If there is just a bit of water in the sink and I turn on the disposal just briefly then the water goes down but then comes right back up. I think you're on to something. If this was venting before but the venting isn't working anymore how can I check this? Besides ripping out the wall, of course.

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If the drain is plugged downstream of the vent, then when you turn the disposal on it forces the water up the vent. When you turn disposal off, that water will just come back down the vent and back into the sink. This proves that you have a vent and that it is working correctly.

Since you ran the snake and it seems to be draining better, then you will need to do as speedball suggested. Get a larger cabled machine(bigger bit on the end of cable) and auger the pipe from the roof directly above ks. You made progress with the longer snake. Just need to use a larger snake now. Hope this helps.

Bad news. I've snaked now from the vent stack on the roof. I dropped about 40 foot down and it's still doing the same thing. The thing is that it IS draining fine if I run the disposal still. I'm getting by fine by running it every so often. I'm out of ideas and about to call Roto Rooter.

I think calling in a plumber, or roto rooter would be your best bet at this time. Please let us know what they find. Sometimes vents are tied together in the attic in many different ways. It is possible that your snaking is not doing any good, because it may be bypassing the plugged portion of pipe. If you call in a pro, they should be able to locate best area for snaking. Good luck and please let us know how things work out.

Nothing's changed yet. Roto Rooter came yesterday and ran a snake down 3 times but the symptoms are still there. He ran the full 75 feet down on at least one of these attempts. He remarked that it seemed awfully easy to send it down and also that he didn't bring anything up on any of the attempts. To me that says it's not a clog. At one point he said that it seemed too easy, went outside and looked at the vent stack to make sure he wasn't running it out of the house that way. Hilarious. It would have been funny to see it dangling outside.

We have a finished basement and the pipe between the kitchen and the main drain is galvanized pipe. We happen to know that because we added that bath last summer and had some pics of the demolition. We didn't think of replacing the pipe then. The plumber suggested that we cut the wall, cut the galvanized pipe out and replace it with PVC. Of course, it'll be the perfect time to snake up and down and really figure out the location of problem whether it's venting or otherwise. When he was running the snake it did sound like it was right behind the wall. As unlikely as it might be there's no way to be 100% sure that it wasn't just sound carrying from somewhere else.

I like the idea of cutting out the pipe and snaking it from there but my carpenter friend is out of town for a month so can't help us with the demo or the repair. I'm hesitant to tear apart our nice guest bathroom so am going to delay that if I can. We bought this house 18 months ago and are going to try to reach the original owners again to see if they know about the venting system (they did a big renovation before selling). I might also cut a bit of the wall just to get a peek behind the sink to see if there's an AAV. We're just going to go for a month or so like this. I'm also going to try snaking from the roof again and maybe even hit the other vents (as unlikely as those may be).

If only I had access to some of that bank bailout money I'd be more willing to just do it all right now. :) The worst case scenario (I hope!) is that our disposal dies and we have to replace that. It'll be better than a torn apart bathroom and a couple of thousand for the whole repair between the plumbing and carpentry costs. This puzzle is keeping me up at night.

Part of me expects that it's going to just clear itself up one day all on its own. It came suddenly and since we still don't know the actual cause, I guess there's no reason to believe it can't just as suddenly clear itself. I'm not going to count on that so going to continue poking at it. I'm still more willing to do that than rip the wall out again. I'll give it a few more weeks. Check back if you're curious. I promise to keep this going until we have an answer!

Im out of advice. This would be an interesting one to see first hand. Im very interested in knowing what the final outcome is. Ill be waiting for your update. Hope its simple. Take care,

Lee

Sorry for no update in a while. There hasn't been any change. Roto Rooter actually came twice and basically snaked about 8 times with the whole thing repeatedly.

Long story short he gave me some story about grease build-up (possible, I guess but after snaking it 8 times? ) and that it was probably causing a weird valve-like action that somehow the disposal was able to push through due to extra pressure. He then insisted that we also needed to replace our galvanized pipe because it's not really the best pipe and it's easy to get corroded. I'm fine with the recommendation but he insisted that was what causing this odd clog. A clog, I'd believe maybe, but not this weird issue that we're experiencing.

He then called a peer (supervisor?) who recommended that he install a clean-out behind our sink for better access. I made a decision to defer this a little because it's going to involve some ripping apart our walls. Things are still draining the same - only with the disposal on. If the disposal dies I'll replace. I think installing the cleanout is the way we're going to have to go but I'm going to put that off a little longer if I can.

ddawson100: I'm very curious to hear about a solution for your problem because I'm experiencing something very similar and I'm starting to think it's a vent issue rather than a clog. I've had the pipes snaked by Roto-Rooter, replaced the garbage disposal and checked all of the other pipes, tubes, etc. leading into the disposal, dishwasher and air gap for clogs. Looking forward to your answer...

I'm sorry to see someone else has the same problem. We haven't found a solution yet. I replaced the disposal as well and plugged the hole leading to the dishwasher.

We're sort of new in this house - just a couple of years. Next step is to take out the cabinet and go into the wall to see if someone at some point put in a valve. After some googling I think that we may have an air admittance valve behind the wall. That's about all I come up with after ruling everything out. We haven't gotten around to that yet because using the disposal works fine and we don't have tools or confidence in ripping out walls. :) We'd like to solve it but have been slow in starting that process.

Solved! We have a carpenter in the house doing some other work. He can do plumbing as well so I asked him to help us with the sink. We had two mysteries - why the drain suddenly stopped working and why it works when we flipped on the disposal.

He first cut the wall out above the sink and found the main metal vent pipe running vertically (of course) about 12 inches left of the faucet. Coming off that at about the level of the faucet is a pvc pipe. This comes 6 inches toward the faucet and then turns down to the sink drain. At the level of the p-trap under the sink the pvc pipe uses a t-connector to go to the sink drain and also to continue down. It runs a few inches parallel to the wall then makes a right angle turn to go under the sink toward the p-trap.

Our carpenter cut the pvc pipe above the sink. If it was a vent issue this would have allowed in air and caused the sink to drain. It didn't help. The carpenter then cut below the sink - just below the t-connector and found a major, major clog. For some reason we had paint chips in there. Not sure how that might have happened since this is a kitchen sink. It drained fine for a long time and we've never used it to wash or scrape paint into it. With direct access to the clog he dug for a while and finally managed to unclog it. He reported that he found some black tar sort of stuff. Pretty ugly.

So it was a clog after all. The reason that it wasn't coming out with the snake is this very thick clog was at the level where the drain entered the wall. Anyone snaking it would have though they hit a bend and kept trying to push. And in all the time of snaking it must have been going the wrong direction. And whenever we turned the disposal on, the water was going up the drain into the main vent stack and draining there. Maybe we have some other problems associated with that but that's for another day.

We've gone 14 months and now we have a drain that works. Whew. We'll put it all back together tomorrow this time with an access panel and a removable cap for easy snake access to the pipe.

Glad you got it figured out. Good job. Adding a cleanout is the best move you could make.

Thanks for the advice, mygirlsdad77. AskMeHelpDesk is a great forum and I appreciate your advice along the way. We had roto rooter out here and all they wanted to throw at it was fancy power tools. In the end it required opening the wall to solve this unusual problem. Now that it's solved it makes sense and I'm glad about that. I just wanted to wrap this up with a resolution just to tie up any loose ends and say thanks! To members like you who contributed.