My handsome hunk of a husband fixed my shower! He first replaced the stems and washers in my shower faucet handles, and the shower head, to stop the dripping leak. He did that on Tuesday night. Then we attempted to snake out the clogged shower drain Tuesday night, without success. We decided that we needed to cut off the cast iron S-trap drain so we could reach the clog. Then we'd replace the S-trap with a PVC S-trap.
So last night we started that job at 9:30 pm. Not the best time to start, but Steve has other commitments this weekend and really needed to finish this last night. The sawing was hard work, because he was working above his head and needed to put heavy pressure on the reciprocating saw to keep it cutting through the pipe.
Thick dark water sprayed out as he worked, and spilled out when the S-trap came off. Yuck! Then we started snaking out the remaining cast iron pipe. Messy, nasty, wet job. And it took so long to break up all the rust clogging the pipe. We had kids start getting ready for bed while we were working, shortly after 10 pm. At midnight, we finally had good water flow through the pipe, and had removed rust, a giant hairball, and some plastic labels from liquid soap bottles. Our drain cover is not secured in place, and I guess kids let labels go down the drain when it was uncovered, at some point.
We took a break to tuck the kids into bed and went back down to rinse the pipe out some more, and then begin gluing our PVC S-trap together and securing it to the cast iron pipes. It was 1 am when we finally came upstairs and were able to get showers. But it works perfectly now! At last!! We put a hair catching filter under the drain cover, and will be securing it in place to prevent hair and labels from going down again.
And my amateur-plumbing husband has the supplies to fix my running toilet tonight, too. So, by tonight, I should have my bathroom working properly again!
Trusting in Him,
April
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Posted by
Aug. 15, 2008 - Yeah!
Glad you got a shower--I just did a whole sink full of dishes AND THE WATER WENT DOWN when I was down. Very cool. :)
Jennifer in New Orleans