plumbing rant

i'll start off by saying, i have no experience in plumbing. i'm good with mechanical things, i just haven't ever delt with plumbing issues.

a few days before christmas anytime i ran the washing machine, it backed up around the drain in the basement floor, about 6 foot diameter. the water does drain then, but just the washing machine dumping all the water is to much for it all at once. a shower sits over this drain by the way. so i call a plumber, they were open on the 24th, and i was off work, so i had them come out then. got it cleaned they said, the plumber and i ran a bunch of water, couldn't get it to back up. i did one thing of laundry and it worked great. well, i go back to do only the 2nd thing of laundry since they've been here today and it backed up again!

have to call them monday, it just annoys me. this is my first house, and i bought it about 8 months ago and i've just been hit left and right with crap, haha. just alot of stuff has happened, that keeps draining my "kegging fund".

it was a big plumbing company that was out, hopefully they work with me on this.

thats all, i just wanted to rant a little.

Fun. The joys of home ownership. I look forward to my home in the future and all the "joys" that go along with it. Did you get an inspection before you bought?

yeah, and i was here, and the guy had every faucet running for about a half hour i'd guess, looking for leaks and stuff. but that was probably 8 months ago.

Was the machine there when you bought the house or did you install it?
Does the machine drain directly into the main drain or is it splashed into a laundry tub first? If it is direct drained, Ask the plumber to do a suds test. It's probably all the laundry soap causing the problem. The new washers kick out a lot of suds and in some instances I've had to resize the drain line to accomodate.

GreenwoodRover said:

Was the machine there when you bought the house or did you install it?
Does the machine drain directly into the main drain or is it splashed into a laundry tub first? If it is direct drained, Ask the plumber to do a suds test. It's probably all the laundry soap causing the problem. The new washers kick out a lot of suds and in some instances I've had to resize the drain line to accomodate.

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no, i got the washing machine from my parents, its probably 8 years old.

i have no idea what a laundry tub is? i have an open trap basically, about 4 feet off the floor and the water coming out of the washing machine goes direction into there. its not coming out of that trap, but through the drain on the floor.

i use the same laundry soap, but i'll ask about a suds test.

I had a similar problem.

Get a drain snake and snake out the drain line from your washing machine and the drain in the floor to as far as the snake goes. Then do the kitchen sink drain the same way. Just with the kitchen sink you'll have to take off the P trap pipe, which is really U shaped, that's under the sink.

A hand operated snake or one you can fit a drill to should work.

is it leaking under the washer too, or just where it spills into the tub/trap?

a laundry tub is the same as a utility sink. Sometimes getting a piece of plastic that bends the washing machine discharge hose into a upside down U shape and hooking the u over the side of a deep basin urility sink/laurdry tub and letting the machine discharge there first will help your issue.