How to unclog sink/tub pipes?

[Justin Case]

A tenant just called and said all her pipes are clogged and drain slow. I know to take the U shaped pipe off the sinks and clean them.
I did this before she moved in.

What do I do if it drains slow after I clean these pipes again?

How do I clear the tub pipe that is not accessible? Only the tub drain its self is.
I was told before do never use Drain-no

Any tips for me when I go there tomorrow and try to fix these drain issues?

Thanks.

[Jon Holdman]

Somewhere in your system you will have cleanouts. These may exist in several different places. The basic idea is to find the cleanouts, and run a snake (aka auger) into them.

The best kind of snake is the powered one with knives. The knives are a set of three or four curved, spring-loaded knives that expand to fill the pipe. They're on the end of a cable. The cable is fed into the cleanout. A motor spins the base which turns the cable.

There are smaller, hand or drill powered versions.

If all the drains in the house are slow, you'll need to find the main cleanout or cleanouts. This could be inside the basement or out in the yard. It's likely to be near the lowest toilet. It might be a cap in a wall or in a pipe that sticks up out of the floor. Out in the yard, it will be a caped pipe. There may be one or two. The current favored approach is two capped pipes, each with a sanitary tee into the main line. They're like a U, with the one away from the house tee-ing back toward the house and the one near the house teeing away from the house. That way you run the auger into the far one to clean the portion of the line back to the house. Then you auger into the near one to clean the line from that point to the city.

An older version uses a single capped pipe with two tees, one in each direction. That's tricker to hit the one you want.

If there are no cleanouts (I have a house like this), you pull the last toilet and auger through the hole.

You might want to get a drain person to come do this, since they will have that big auger. You can rent those, too.

If you have old clay pipe, or cast iron that's separated, this will be an ongoing problem. Used to be in my principal residence I had to have it augered about once a year because it was clay pipe and the pipes were unlevel and had roots coming in the cracks. $4000 later and I have a new PVC pipe up to the street. For another $6000 I could have new pipe that last 15' from the street to the city line.

Enjoy!