Well Lissa has been trying to get me ready to tackle a few projects around the house lately. Our latest project wasn’t exactly on her list though. We found a bunch of water in the carpet downstairs in our guest room earlier this week. I didn’t know exactly where it was coming from, and I didn’t have a ton of time to investigate.
On the first night I pulled the carpet back, we used the shop vac to suck up as much of the water as we could. Then I went out on the roof at 9:30 at night and was trying to snake the drains through the roof vents. That didn’t solve the problem.
Losing Hope
On the second day I started earlier in the evening. Again I tried to access the clog from the roof vents, with no success. With that I went back in to the kitchen sink, which we figured was the cause of the trouble. I have tried to snake that drain in the past, and was not able to get around a corner. This time I was more persistent, and I managed to work the entire snake into the drain. I was sure this would solve the problem. I put everything back together, and we had to leave for our last basketball game of the season.
When I got home I was prepared to test my fix. Unfortunately the test failed, and water was again leaking onto the floor. I was ready with the shop vac, so it wasn’t a big deal, other than that we still had a problem. I broke away some sheet rock and realized that the pipe didn’t continue all the way to the floor. It turned and went out into the foundation wall. That made me worried that I wouldn’t be able to figure out a solution on my own. That was enough for the second night. I put a bucket under the kitchen sink and ran the dishwasher. It had to be emptied 3 times, but we got the dishes taken care of.
The 3rd night I didn’t do anything, I took the night off.
This morning I cut a hole above the cleanout. I had tried to pull the plug on the cleanout on both the first and 2nd night. I was using a wrench, rubber mallet, hammer, a second wrench on top of the first to get more leverage. Nothing I did even started to budge the plug. I watched a video of a guy that recommended drilling the plug right off. He would then use a sawzall to cut a pie shape out of the plug so he could get it removed.
A Solution?
After snaking the drain again, and trying a torch on the plug, and a longer cheater bar, I was about to tear the whole house down. When I put the cheater bar on the 2 wrenches I’d been trying to use, the handle on the wrench was bending. This was making me nervous that I was going to break the wrench. Finally I realized that I had a pipe wrench in the garage. I went and got it, and then using it with the cheater bar I was finally able to break it loose. That gave us the access we needed to clear the drain. Now the sink is back in action and I’ve got to get to work patching the hole I created that ultimately didn’t do much for fixing the problem. That’s alright, I’m just happy to have the leak figured out. Life is great!
