Hey there, /r/plumbing! I come to you asking for help in solving this problem. So, a little backstory:
My wife and I had a guy from Roto-Rooter out here back in October to install a water line to our kitchen for our new refrigerator. While he was here, he inspected the water heater and determined it was just about to go (which I kind of already knew in the back of my mind, as it was installed in 1996 so it had reached the end of its life expectancy). Anyway, the Roto-Rooter guy installed a brand new water heater and all was good.
Fast-forward a few weeks, and all of the sudden the water pressure in our shower was significantly stronger than it had ever been before. Neither my wife nor I had touched anything downstairs, so our only explanation was that somehow the new water heater had maybe worked out some old sediment in the pipes or something which allowed for better flow. (I have no idea if this is an actual thing that happens, but it sounded pretty good in my head.)
Anyway, I wouldn't complain about having better pressure in the shower, but now it's causing the tub to fill up every time either of us use it, and it takes forever to drain. In the past whenever it would drain slowly, I'd go buy a bottle of Instant Power Hair & Grease from Home Depot and it would always do the trick, but this time it didn't seem to help at all.
The drain itself is a push-pull drain so I couldn't get a snake directly down there; I had to snake it through the overflow plate, which pulled out a little hair but didn't do anything to speed up the draining process.
So here are my questions:
Could there be a clog directly under the tub drain that could have survived an entire bottle of drain opener and would have avoided being snaked if I went through the overflow plate?
If so, how do I take off the push-pull drain to better access it?
Is this whole thing just happening because of the increased water pressure?
If so, how in the hell did we suddenly get increased water pressure, especially if it didn't start until a few weeks after the new water heater was installed?
Any help, suggestions or funny comments would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Submitted February 12, 2015 at 02:43AM by scottheisel http://ift.tt/1uFWeOP Plumbing
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