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Basement floor drain back up, 1/2" snake failed, what next?

Home Improvement Asked by KubiK888 on September 4, 2020

The basement floor drain is having backup after the wash cycle from the washer, it doesn’t backup from other water usage.

I had a plumber came in to power snake with 1/2″ tip (and few other tips) into the floor drain for an hour without success. He suggested the only solution is to break the concrete of the floor and replace the blocked piping.

Is there any less aggressive or cheaper solution I should try first? Someone also suggested me to hire other plumber who has optical device to look at the blockage in the floor drain pipe (for a full diagnostic), do you think it’s useful?

2 Answers

I had to deal with a similar problem recently, floor flooding when washer was draining, and what worked made a huge mess but it worked: I filled the vent stack with water (going up on the roof with a hose. It flooded the sink, but all that weight it pushed through eventually.)

If you try this, try and plug the drains on the first floor, and the laundry sink. Otherwise as the column of water in the vent builds up it will be flooding out of all your drains. Once it bursts through you'll heard it whoosh out, and all your drains should be flowing. This will not work as well if your toilets are on the same vent stack. In my situation the kitchen (on first) and the laundry (in basement) were sharing a common vent.

Answered by freshop on September 4, 2020

Using a shop vac try sucking on the washer drain line. First fill up the washer drain line with water, then quickly putting the vac hose over the drain.

If you know which is the first sink or toilet below the location of the blockage you could run water into that drain and then put the shop vac on the washer drain. The idea is to relieve the blockage by forcing water in the opposite direction. Sometimes this relieves a blockage when forcing water in the normal drain direction only packs it tighter.

Answered by Jim Stewart on September 4, 2020

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