Clogged Drain

A number of months ago, I turned my mind to a developing problem: A slow drain. Not just any slow drain, an incorrigibly slow drain.

The obvious solution was the usual. I released the pop-up drain plug and cleared out all the accumulated hair.

That worked a little, but it was still not the drain of old. I've gotten a lot more tolerant of problems as I've gotten older, so the next effort didn't come for another couple (or more) weeks.

The next solution was to drop the drain trap and give that a go. I cleared out a good bit of accretion, but found to my surprise that the drain was still slow.

As far as I'm concerned, the thoughts I'd devoted to this problem don't constitute i-candy. Half-baked ideas and theories are what I call i-ruminations. (Our instructional technologist called them once ruinations. There may be some truth to that.) These efforts only become i-candy when they've reached the level of revelation.

The question was where did the clog reside? It wasn't in the stopper or the trap. In fact, I removed the drain pipe to the wall and cleared that outflow pipe right to the down pipe. So that meant the blockage had to be in the wall. The next step would have to be a professional plumber with a snake. But I'm as cheap as the next homeowner and didn't want to go that route until I'd exhausted the next easiest options. Short of borrowing a snake from some as-yet-unknown friend, I didn't immediately know what that option was.

In this case, I let the problem persist for a few more weeks as I continued to ruminate. Every time I used the sink, though, I'd devote more mental capital to the problem.

Actually, I did have an idea of the next easiest solution, but had already implemented it without any success. I'd taken a plunger to the drain at least twice, each time with no significant improvement in drainage.

But why hadn't it worked? If the developing blockage was in the wall, perhaps it was farther down the drain. If it was far enough down, the plunger could have failed simply because any change in pressure from the plunging action would have been inadequate so far away from the source. After all, air is a highly compressible substance; gases are like that.

If you blow through a short length of tube, the air coming out the end is pretty close to the pressure of that coming out of your mouth. As the tube increases in length, the pressure drops simply because of the compressive nature of gases. You have to blow much harder for the output pressure to be equal to the output for a shorter tube. The pressure change from a plunger is going to be pretty constant, so the farther away from the plunger the constriction happened to be, the less impact there would be from the plunging.

When the drainage matches the flow from a faucet trickle, desperation sets in. Oddly, the solution still didn't come in the form of a call to the plumber. My willingness to spend money had not increased an iota. So out came the plunger again. I didn't give up so easily this time. I shoofa-shoofaed a score of repetitions.

To my surprise the drainage improved. The flow now matched the flow from a modest faucet stream. It was time to ruminate.

If the septic accretion was further into the wall, why had any more plunging made a difference? (My willingness to try again was a bit less baffling. The cost of plunging is infinitesimal. The cost of a plumber? Shudder.) Repetition can be remarkably effective. The voice of a child asking for a cookie once is irritating. The sound of a child asking for the 100th time is erosive. (We do all know what happens if you give a mouse a cookie don't we?) I think what happened with my drain was that repetition did what just a few plunges failed to do; it gave an opportunity for some of the accretion to become loosened and freed.

I have a theory that plunging the drain for a longer time could make the real difference. I'll probably have to wait for the constriction to increase in order to maximize the pressure and its effectiveness, but if I'm right, I should have a freer drain, my hard-earned cash still in my pocket, and a happier wife.

I'll let you know. There may be some i-candy in it for you.