The view from under the tub is enlightening. Credit to the Ryobi work light that I picked up. It produces 2000 lumens of light and doesn’t get hot enough to melt flesh like my old halogen shop light did. But I digress.
For a week or so, Shelly has been complaining about a slow shower drain. We tried Liquid Plumber and had only temporary luck with that (maybe a day or so of slightly faster drainage).
I took a trip out to the local Home Depot and got a drain snake that I naïvely assumed I would be able to thread down the drain of the tub and free up whatever was causing the trouble. To my surprise, that drain wasn’t really designed to be snaked from above like that and the tool was rendered useless by unseen baffles mere inches from the opening.
I was ready to call a plumber, but I thought I’d first take a look under the house and see if there was a point where I could access the drain and unclog it.
Believe it or not, the PVC part of the drain that is attached directly to the tub in two places was attached to the large galvanized drain pipe with only a rubber coupling and a couple of hose clamps.
I removed this whole drain contraption and moved it outside assuming that if I hosed it out, that I would find the clog in there… nope, not the case.
Eventually, managed to run the recently acquired drain snake into the galvanized part of the system and after sending it as far as it could go, I hoped I had managed to clear some kind of unseen blockage from the plumbing. The snake looked pretty nasty and so I had some hope that I had been successful.
Once the pipes were all put back together, we crossed our fingers and ran the water. I can report that the tub now drains faster than it can be filled. This is a big victory – not so much because I saved a few bucks on a plumber, but because I feel like I know a little more about how it all goes together and if it happens again, I will feel confident to go in and fix it again.