It better be a stanley bostich....No Pissload....haha.

 

I guess I'm once again late to the game but I am a plumber.

As usual there has been a lot of good advise given.

BREWDUDE, I would agree that if you kitchen sink isn't actually filling up that you have a venting issue. You may not be able to look down the pipe that goes through the roof because there is a good chance that there are some off sets to get that pipe back into the wall. We usually run a snake down the vent which usually does the trick. We use a garden hose too but in a house with more than one floor it's possible to flood the house that way. It would work on your house. I think that people here have pointed you in the right direction and you'll have that sink draining properly in no time.

RockPick, I think Norm has provided you with your answer. MA doesn't require an air gap for a dishwasher. It really doesn't make much sense to me. When we install a dishwasher we do like Norm said and loop the discharge hose to the upper most part of the inside of the cabinet fasten it with a pipe clip (not to the underside of the counter though) then connect it to the garbage disposer, food waste grinder, what ever people call it. Insinkerator is a brand of garbage disposer. I think thoes air gaps for dishwashers are pretty cheesy and fail often.

When asking a question about just about anything to do with a house, the age of the house is pretty important. It will tell a lot about what practices and types of materials would have been used in the original construction.

People mentioned the material that the pipes might be. Here in MA, a new(er) residence will be piped in plastic for the drains and generally copper for the water pipe, although there are many new materials out now that are being used in construction. There are a couple kinds of plastic pipe we see. The black plastic pipe (ABS) is what we use here in western MA. For some reason in easter MA they use the white (sometimes gray) plastic pipe (PVC). I don't know why that is but I know I prefer the ABS because the solvent used to bond pipe and fittings is a one step process where as PVC uses a cleaner and solvent, two seperate procedures. In older houses you could see many different materials used. There might be lead pipe (if there is there is a costly repair in the future), cast iron pipe (mainly used for the main drainage piping and venting) galvanized steel (I think pretty common in the 40's and 50's, usually past it's useful life at this point in time) copper (I see it frequently. it holds up well in most residential applications) and others. Each material has a different procedure when working with it.

In BREWDUDEs situation the age matters because not all houses have modern waste and vent systems. Some houses use what we call a pot trap, or drum trap. This is the canister looking thing. In a modern house a p-trap (the J shaped pipe). You must have a venting system with p-traps because without that system other fixtures draining (especially the toilet) would create a vacuum that would suck the water out of the trap allowing odor and gasses into the living area. The venting system equalizes the air throughout the system. A drum trap just uses a lot more water so even if there is a vacuum, it can't suck enough water to eliminate the trap seal. If BREWDUDE had a drum trap under his kitchen sink with the same symptoms the solution would be something different.

Sorry. I do this to customers all the time. I explain too much. I just want people to know about the stuff in their house. It's good to be an informed home owner.

Good luck!

 

Well i watched Tom go out on his roof tonight from my computer...thanks to google earth...

Looks like he has one pipe on the back of the house thats iron and one on the side of the house thats PVC. I saw him run a snake down the PVC one after filling his sink but still no luck. I could almost hear it gurgle here in Iowa. Im sure he will be here soon to say more....

Oh ya...Tom definetly has the qualities of a plumber....Its called pull your dang pants up...

 

No air gap for my dishwasher and no backups into the sink! But I've got well ventilated plumbing! No vents exposed on the frontside of the roof either. All vents offset to the backside of the roof to give the front roof a much cleaner look. And I have cleanouts everywhere. After the plumbing nightmares in my first house we made sure the plumbing in my house now was gonna be as problem free as we could make it. I even have a 4 foot crawl space with a concrete floor/dust cover. Of course my father-in-law wouldn't do the plumbing unless he had 4 feet to work in!

 

Well I made it to the roof and back in one piece. Heres what I have. As Justin said, I have one pipe on the back of the house thats metal ( not sure what kind, but its metal) and I have one pipe on the side of the house thats white PVC. Neither of them go thru the roof per say. The one on the back of the house only goes thru the roof of the addition, so when it was originally built, that pipe was mounted to the back outside wall of the house. So I climb up there and look into each pipe as best as I could. Its dark out and I was using a flashlight. From what I could see, they "seemed" clear, but as Wittom said above, they may make a turn and I wouldnt be able to see past the bend. I ran the water in the kitchen sink and as it drained I ran outside, ran up the ladder and listened in the pipe on the side of the house and I could hear the water draining. I didnt do the sdame to the pipe on the back of the house, but I will this weekend. SO I ran a snake down the PVC on the side. It seemed to go about 25' with no problems and when I pulled it out therer was nothing on the end of it. I went and checked the sink and guess what....Its still gurggling like mad. Im gonna try the back pipe and prolly the side one again this weekend when its light out and I can see what I'm doing.

Wittom...you are right on time man, thanks. I have a few questions for ya....where do those pipes go? I know they both go into the griund and then dissappear. Do they turn and go into the main line? I guess I'm just trying to visualize how the vents work to try to help me figure it out. Would regular pressure from a garden hose be enough? I seen this thing at Home Creepo called a water bomb or something. You put it in the pipe and hook the hose to it, it fills up and eventually breaks a seal on the front of it, shooting water into the pipe. Would that work? Again, im at my wits end and im ready to go postal here if I hear this sink gurggle one more time.

Oh yeh...this clown who posted just before me(post #33)......pay no attention to him, hes a damn Freak

BREW

 

You most likely won't see much looking into the vents. Mine do turn with 45s. But in my first house the vent for the kitchen, which also didn't go straight down, was clogged. My father-in-law could feel it when he used his machine to do our drains.

 

Can you drag that machine down here


BREW

 

I'd have to go to Vincentown to get it next week. My days off are during the week right now. It has all sorts of fancy attachments for it including some kinda saw that will cut roots!

Or we could take my sawzall and cut the entire wall the sink is on completely out. Push the wall out of the house and start new!

 

How about we just use some c4 with a remote detonator. We'll do it wednesday night, this way we can push the button from the C-View while we eat wings and drink beer.


BREW

 

I turned down the job. With kids in the near future, I didn't want to be that far away from the family.

Thanks guys for the help! I'm going to do some checking...

-RP-

 

That contraption sounds like a roto rooter.
They are not cheap. I always rent one for the few times I need it here at the house. If I bought one then to date it would have cost me over $100 per use. I can rent it for $25 with 100' of line and 4 heads. So at this rate of use I've got about 100 years before it would pay for me to buy one.
I can't imagine trying to use it on the roof though. LOL

Tom that balloon thing you are talking about is called a Drain King.
It does work great, the more water pressure and the more volume you have the better it works.
They have 2 sizes, one for 4" and larger main, and one for 2-4"
What it does, you attach it to the end of your garden hose (besure to use a cheap hose you can throw away after wards becasue it will be nasty when you pull it out. Especially if you go past one of the toilets.) Shove it down the pipe as far as it will go. Turn the water on, it swells to close the back end of the pipe then shoots a stream of water at the clog. I have 90+ psi +/-, I have no idea how many GPH (alot though). So mine works great! I can pump alot of water behind the clog and build alot of pressure fast. I can almost hit 1/2 the rated max PSI of the drain line in a short matter of time. I don't belive that a clog has ever made it to the full 90 psi that my public water supply company can give it before it moved.
Down side, if it's only a partial clog these aren't as effective becasue it just backs up behind the clog then just flows over like a dam, so it never build up any pressure.

Before I did this I think I would probably use the boric acid, follow the directions, wear googles and a resperator, do not breath the fumes and DO NOT get it on you or the roof. I don't know how it would react to asphalt shingles. But it is used for concrete etching, so if it eats concrete then it can't be good on shingles. It wil laslo eat your pipes so after they are free tehn flush with water. But it also eats clogs!
If you have a septic tank then follow the boric acid up by flushing a package of yeast or other enzyme down the toilet a day or so later to replinish them in the tank to break down the solids. The boric acid kills the ones you already have and need.

 

Hey Matt....No septic tank here, thank god its city sewer so there should be no worries if I go with the acid. I think im gonna try to snake again on saturday. I didnt give it a full honest effort tonight. Like I said, it was dark out and I couldnt see much. I guess the water bomb thing aint gonna do the trick. I can only assume its a partial clog, otherwise I think I would be having more issues than just the kitchen sink. So if the snake doesnt get me thru by lunch time on saturday, its off to the Creepo, to get some acid.

One thing..how do I know which of the 2 pipes is the vent for the sink? Like I said earlier, they both go straight down and dissappear into the ground. Is there anyway to check? I did hear the water from the sink draining in the one vent, but I never listened in the other one....would I hear it in both no matter what or just one....


BREW

 

To be honest, I could give better answers if I could see what you're looking at. I should also say that I'm licensed in MA, so my knowlege is of the MA State Plumbing Code. I don't know if NJ has their own state code or if they use the BOCCA code. In any event procedures should be similar.

It sounds like you have an older house. I know that here we can't run the vent pipe on the outside of the house. It's probably the same there. If the vent pipes are run on the outside of the house they are subject to frost closure.

I don't know if your on a public sewer or if you have a septic tank. Either way both of thoes pipes tie into the pipes that are serving your plumbing fixtures. The way it's supposed to be is, well picture this. You can see the pipe in the basement that serves your kitchen sink. At some point it rolls up into the wall, just above the foundation. That is it runs in the crawl space on the horizontal, but is vertical where it continues up the side of the house. The vertical pipe is the waste and vent. There should be a TY fitting in the wall with the branch coming out under the kitchen sink. That branch should have the p-trap attached and then connect to the sink. The portion below the TY is the soil or waste stack. The portion of pipe above the TY is the vent stack. Picture one long verticle pipe with a TY about 16" off the floor. Thats the way it should be. If you have bootleg plumbing finding the cause and solution becomes more complicated.

I personally would opt for the use of a snake over water pressure. We do ocasionally use what we call a pressure bag, which I think is basicly what your talking about. I would use this if there were a blockage between where the pipe exits the house, beyond where the last fixture ties in, and the sewer or septic. If you use a pressure bag inside the house there is the risk of flooding your house. It's a good idea to have an understanding of where that water would be going. A snake, with the proper head will generally do a better job of cleaning the inside of the pipe and the debris can be washed away when you test.

I just thought of another thing to try. Do you have a shop vac? I have used mine to clear drains before. If you have a two bowl kitchen sink you'll have to plug one side. Rap a wet rag around the end of the vac and see if you can suck any stuff up. It doesn't work all the time but it's easy and worth a try.

If you had some pics I might be able to give you more specific answers. I would want to see the piping in the crawl space, under the kitchen sink and the pipes on the outside of the house.

You could always call a plumber. I'm not the type to call someone in though. It would probably cost you a few bucks. If you want to tackle this yourself there are enough people here to get you through it. It might take a little more time but would save you a lot of money.

 

BREWDUDE, the large metal pipe is the main vent stack. It's the smaller PVC pipe that would be the vent serving the kitchen sink.

 

There is an accessory for an air compressor that you use on the sink drain that I've seen somewhere. Yep, I figure 135 lbs of pressure should clear the clog. If not, you'll probably have to install new drains anyway. Of course that's after you pick all the shrapnel out of your ***!