Corpse Run 310: The Corpse Run Guide to Unclogging a Drain
LIVESTREAM UPDATE:
Hey guys, after a little hiatus, the livestream is back! The next stream will be this Friday, May 10th at 10pm est! Shout out in the comments what you want me to draw, and I’ll do my best to cover everything. As always, I’ll be chatting it up and playing a game or two afterwards!
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See you then!
END LIVESTREAM UPDATE!
For anyone who saw yesterday’s Kat’s Korner, or saw what I was posting on Twitter, I was not having a great day. In recent posts, I’ve mentioned how both our bathroom and kitchen sinks have been clogged, and after pouring various drain cleaners down the tubes with no success, it was time to bring out the big guns.
I went to a hardware store, bought a canister auger (which I call a drain snake), and returned home. Here’s a view of the blue wonder:
Despite its fearsome appearance, I was unable to get the snake past the U shape at the bottom of the first pipe.
Whatever, I figured, lemme try the kitchen.
I laid out a large plastic bag on the floor which served as a platform on which I placed the contents of the kitchen sink. Each item (dishes, pots, etc.) had been sitting in murky standing water for a while, and were all pretty slimy.
Great stuff right there.
Even though the sink was now devoid of tableware, it was half full of gross water. I guided the snake down the drain, turned the handle a few times and
shhhhhhhhhhhh
The water was going down the drain, just like that! Awesome!
After the initial excitement passed, however, I realized that the sound of the water was… louder than normal.
Louder?
Oh $#^%
Sure enough, when I opened the cabinet below, the gallon of gross water that had previously been in the sink was now shooting out of the pipe, which was sporting a nifty new hole.
I’d like to tell you that I exercised quick thinking and grabbed a pot to catch the vile fluid, but I didn’t. Like a frightened deer, I stood still and… just watched.
I dried up the area with some towels and removed the broken section of pipe.
Just great.
It was now time for a trip to Home Depot. Walking around holding the broken pipe like a dummy, I eventually found the right replacement, but needed a few inches to be cut off.
I asked a Home Depot associate where the cutting station was.
“Oh,” he said, “it’s just down the hall.”
Down the hall I met another associate and asked if he could cut the new pipe for me.
“You can get a hacksaw, only five bucks!” he said.
“You don’t offer cutting services?”
“Nope,” he responded.
Now, I’ve been to many a Home Depot before, and when buying stuff like chains, pipes, wood, etc, they would always have a cutting station to get you the desired length.
Maybe this employee was new, so I found a third guy to ask.
“Oh, we’re not allowed to cut anything in the building,” he told me with a smile.
What?! Home Depot isn’t allowed to cut anything inside their store? It’s Home Depot, a hardware store!
I thanked the guy, bought the pipe, and returned home. Jackie and I have a hacksaw (for which she knitted a cozy), so cutting the pipe wouldn’t be too much of a hassle.
Unless you’re puny little me and it takes forever.
Once it cut to the right size (and brass powder was spread all over the floor), I put the new pipe in place, fastened it at the sink end, and then started tightening the bolt at the other end when…
The bolt broke into a million pieces. It must have been really rusty or something.
I think I’m gonna stop this story right here. In the immediate moments after the bolt broke, I had a minor freakout and was ready to give up and toss all the pipes out the window.
Since that time, I was able to properly replace the pipe under the sink, but was not able to fix the drainage problem.
After everything that happened yesterday, all I accomplished was brining us back to exactly the same problem we had the day before.
In other words, I accomplished nothing.
Fun day.
But hey, you’ve got a shiny new pipe!
Also, would it be possible to simply remove that section of the pipe (since your sink is now sans water) and try to unclog it from that point?
I totes did try that once I broke the pipe. Unfortunately, I was unable to pull anything out of the pipes even with the head start. It seems like the clog is really really really far down the line…
Your drill is the drill that will pierce the waterworks!
Joke aside, Jesus man that sounds like a s**ty day
Yeah… I’ve had better =P
You learnt that that bit of pipe isn’t the problem. That’s an accomplishment.
Small victories and silver linings, right?
Actually, what he should have learned is that, more than likely, all his plumbing is horrifically rusted to the point where a somewhat stiff spring can put a hole through it and have more than just the broken pipe replaced because the rest of the piping is bound to have serious, serious issues down the line if it is in that poor shape, whether or not it is broken already.
As a plumbing guy at Lowe’s I can say that you definitely need to call in a plumber to replace your piping or replace it yourself- I can’t think of anything that would work to remove the clog. But if the bathroom pipes are poly (white plastic) there are several heating elements you can poor down there- add cold water and cover the drain hole with a plastic bowl and it takes about 30-60 minutes to eat through all the organic grime and waste clogging it up.
I have to say, that’s funny. I’ve never seen a snake bore through a pipe like that. I’d agree with Cassius, snake it from behind the P-trap. As far as cutting the pipe, a pipe cutter is cleaner and more efficient.
Clean and efficient? Jackie and I don’t know the meaning of those words =P
A new comic means a new reminder for people to come to the forum! I’ve seen some guests online at the forum, so I know you’re out there.
And I have a question for Alex: Why do you need to click a (tiny) link to see the comments?
That seems to be the default setting for this wordpress layout. I’ll see if there’s a way to change it!
My local home depot will cut anything for me, even occasionally things I did not buy there (if I am also getting something I did buy there cut at the same time) from wooden dowels to PvC pipe (they have a special pipe cutting tool!) to plywood to particleboard to wood planks, they cut just about anything for you for free. It’s wonderful. They even have special cutting stations in the wood and plumbing aisles with yellow lines on the floor that customers may not cross when machinery is in use and the sales help for each aisle has to be trained on them in order to use them.
Maybe the employees at his Home Depot are idiots and can’t be trusted with sharp cutting implements. ;P
liquid plumber…..gets rid of almost anything.
Actually liquid plumber was one of the first things he tried… it didn’t work.
And I thought my Final Exams for college was bad…
Okay, I work at a Home Depot, and two days ago I cut two lengths of pvc pipe for a customer with an in store hacksaw. What those guys told you was either complete bullshit, or the manager is a wackjob paranoid guy that doesn’t trust his employees to know what they are doing with pointy objects. Either way, send a nicely worded complaint into the customer service part of the website, and let justice happen.
I’ll give it a shot, thanks for the info!
Hey Alex,
My husband works as an apartment maintenance tech, when I told him about your drain problems he kind of blinked and said “Tell him it’s a main line clog and to call his apartment manger or maintenance worker, he can’t deal with something like that himself. Most likely the clog is much further down the line and not even in his apartment”.
So consider the advice passed on.