washing machine is about 20 feet away from the main drain (which is even with the kitchen sink and bathroom, house is 1 story w/crawl space). when it discharges it goes into the tub first,then drains out from there. no vent on the w/m drain pipe. is that the problem, or is the main drain clogging up. the toilet flushes ok.

Normally, what happens is that the drain piping in your house clogs up downstream of the kitchen sink drain since lots of solids end up going down that drain.

If your main drain line is clogging up downstream of the kitchen sink drain, but the toilet connects to the main drain line downstream of the clog, then your drain piping from the toilet will continue to work fine, but you can have problems (as you seem to) upstream of that clog.

I would have the drain from the kitchen sink cleared all the way out to the sewer buried under the middle of the street or avenue you live on, and that should correct the problem.

(Alternatively, phone a small plumbing company so the owner of the company with 900 years of experience will come out to clear your drain and will be able to look at your plumbing and figure out where the clog must be based on what you've said here.)

thank you for the help. i will have to find the 900 y/o plumber in my area. there are a few places like that, i have never used the giant "box store" plumbing companies.

ooh, hack jobs!

(1) washer is mandated to have a separate drain of at least 1-1/2 inches, with venting and a trap.

(2) not a 20 foot horizontal run to anyplace.

(3) certainly not draining into a bathtub. although you DO have an airgap to prevent backup

(4) lint has killed the tub drain, it needs to be snaked.

(5) and that "900 year old plumber" is almost certain to find enough things out of code, some dangerous, in your house to have another 900years of work nobody who knows what they're doing pulls that kind of silly stunt with a drain line.

sorry. let me re-phrase my post. the w/m has its own drain line, but it backs up into the tub. at the w/m there is the 1-1/2 line with the trap but does not have a line running up to create a vent. would installing a vent stop it from backing up into the tub? we have lived in this house about 7 years, never had the main line cleaned, thinking its time.

quote:

we have lived in this house about 7 years, never had the main line cleaned, thinking its time

Your washing machine is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to assessing the condition of your house's drainage piping. No other appliance or fixture puts as much water as quickly into your house's drain piping, so if there's gonna be a problem with the drain piping not being able to handle the water flow, it normally first starts showing up after you do laundry.

I'd clear your drain piping before doing anything else because that's frequently the cause of drainage problems in every house.

are you talking about the w/m line or the main line

first guess would be the tub drain needs snaking down to the main line. then evaluate how everything in the house is draining with a 2 gallon pail of water. you should drain out everything in about the same time using the same amount of water, assuming everything is a 1-1/2 inch line.

if not, you need to look at the slow drains. might be missing vents, might need snaking as there is clogging there, too.

the washer line should have a clean shot at a vent line. if there is none, logic suggests the machine is far away from one, so going straight up, and through the roof with a new vent line, is how a plumber would attack it.

any cold-weather climate code is giong to require a certain amount of oversizing once you leave the warm walls. that greatly reduces the chances of the vent freezing. your inspector would tell you... but you also probably need to have a licensed plumber do it, and get inspections and permits.

The main line.

See, inside the wall behind or beside the toilet in your house will be a big 3 inch diameter pipe, commonly called the "vent stack".

All the drains in the house empty into the bottom portion of that vent stack and all the vents in the house connect to the top portion of that stack before it goes through the roof (to minimize the number of holes in the roof which can all be potential leakage sites).

Under your basement floor, that vent stack turns and runs at a shallow downward angle to the sewer under the middle of the street or avenue you live on.

It's within the first 20 or so feet that the vent stack turns to a near horizontal angle that all the solids from your kitchen sink accumulate, and that's normally the area that needs to be cleared.

However, I'm not a plumber, and so maybe just tell your plumber that your washing machine is backing up into your bathtub, and let him decide what drain pipe to clear. That way, if the problem persists, you can phone him back and get another one done free.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Nestor,

thank you to everyone for the info.