Plumbing – Question about fixing footer drains with no access

When drain water from one fixture comes back out another fixture, it means your blockage is beyond the point where those drains meet.

You need to get a good look at the topology of your waste plumbing, to get some ideas about where the blockage is. Clothes washer -> bathtub is a common symptom, because the clothes washer drains a lot of water up high (it has a pump) and the tub drain is down low.

Snaking down a drain is really hard, because of all the curves of the P-trap. If you're lucky, you have a clean-out somewhere, like under the house or behind a wall. Otherwise, you can try removing a P-trap to get the snake in, or removing a toilet. Removing a toilet is not very hard, but can be daunting.

We had a similar problem in this house. There were a few clean-outs accessible in the crawlspace, and our landlord used a hand-held snake in them, but didn't have much luck.

They hired a professional plumber. He pulled a toilet out and ran a huge snake down the drain (not one of the handheld units, but a huge, loud, floor-standing model heavy-duty cable). After running all 75' out, he borrowed another snake from his colleague, for 150' of snaking. This is a single-story house, on a 50'-wide lot, so the snake was well in to the street!

He said he pulled out a lot of roots. This is apparently common in older plumbing. They develop a small leak, and nearby plants grow after the nutrient-rich water, and find their way in to the pipe. It took him about 4 hours.

Plumbing is simple. There aren't a lot of rules to follow. Everything works in obvious ways. You don't need a lot of expensive, complicated tools, and if you do need something big, you can rent it. Anyone can fix plumbing.

But it can also be unpleasant. Screw-on connections may be rusted in place - hacksawing is often easier. There's the spectre of old poop and hair. Things may be difficult to reach - in a cabinet behind a sink basin or in a muddy crawlspace full of rat droppings.

If the job takes a few days, and you're unaccustomed to living without plumbing, it can be a trying time. Especially if there's a whole family in the house, and they aren't sympathetic. A pro will get the job done much faster, since they arrive with the right tools, parts, and experience.

There's a lot of instructions out there, on the internet, at the library, at the hardware store. If you decide to get your feet wet (get it? ha ha) then you will be able to find the information you need.

There is a concrete that I have used, and it is regular concrete, and perhaps it can have gravel in it, but the type I have installed did not use any gravel/aggregate. Dry pack is what I have learned to know it by, and stone setters use it for building walls and laying flagstone sidewalks. I have used it for shower bases over PVC liner and coated it with Redguard for waterproofing. That is where I learned that it took on water real fast. I was to dampen the dry pack slab I set 2 days before. What water I poured on to move around just fell into the concrete, did not stand at all. I even had a decent troweled surface.

The mix is the same, just add enough water to get the concrete to form a ball when compressed in your hand, and I mean just enough, too much will screw it up.

This may be worth a shot, but be careful, this may clog too from atmospheric dirt, decayed debris settling in etc.

The pipe since it is covered with concrete can be black corrugated drain tile or perforated sch 35 set in a gravel bed. Holes in the pipe are slits in the black drain tile and gravel size will not matter. In the Sch 35 the holes are larger so you do not want to use a small gravel there, #57 crushed stone or something larger than 3/4" washed gravel depending on your area. You may want to consider using a different type of area drain. The way you describe "shower drain", sound like it get clogged pretty easily. Replacing the drain you have with something that has a much larger grate or trap included that allows debris to collect, but not clog, may do you well too.