Plumbing – Blockage in bendy pipe

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I have a problematic pipe that has a blockage. Problematic for three reasons:

  1. I could not snake through it (I have a 25 feet snake with a manual spin, spent a good while spinning trying to snake through, could not 🙁

  2. it builds up blockage very quickly (2 months) – now can have only about 5% water in shower than usual to avoid flooding

  3. no clean out cap/access point around the bendy area (red circle)

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Can someone please suggest:

a) short term/quick fixes I can do?

b) solutions (expensive/inexpensive) that a plumber may be able to do?

Note that there's not much of a drop from shower drain level to the soil pipe level (because of the storage door and where soil pipe is located). See below.

enter image description here

Note also that the pipe is all glued up. Can't disconnect anywhere in order to take out the blockage.

Very many thanks for any comments/answers,

Ben

Best Answer

I'd suggest the following (apologies for the crude drawing).

From left-to-right:

  • extend pipe out past the black pipe
  • attach yellow clean-out elbow (not 90 degree!...use a sweep (yellow))
  • this will be angled down aiming towards the run along the other wall
  • connect the sweep to the other pipe using two 45 degree elbows (purple)

enter image description here

Sweep with cleanout:

enter image description here

45 degree elbow:

enter image description here

That should:

  • remove any 90 degree turns (never a good thing in a drain)
  • reduce turns in general (from 5 to 3)
  • give you a 'snake-able' cleanout entry point.

While you're at it, I'd also move upstream to that inside corner 90 degree angle and replace that with a 90 degree sweep as well.

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