- This topic has 2 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 17 years, 10 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Hi,
This is slightly off topic I know, but I’ve chosen this forum as I’ve always had great support here in the past. (anyway my washing machine does drain to the soil stack!) Surely a few of you whitegoods engineers are plumbers anyway.A few weeks ago I found that if I flushed the loo the level would rise up, then drain quite slowly.
It would also sometimes push water from the trap into the bath, and would always seem to syphon the water out of this trap after.I found that replacing the air admittance valve on the top of the soil stack fixed this, but 2 weeks later and it is doing the same again.
Does this indicate a blockage further down the drain?
Am I best contacting the water board, or should I privately get a drain cleaning firm out?
A few relevant points:
The soil stack is about 30 feet from the edge of my property, yet maybe only 5 to 10 from the sewage pipe as that runs through my property.A house 4 doors down from us has had a leaking garden for some time
Finally contractors have dug holes and are fixing the drain.
I guess this is not raw sewage as they are not in a great urgency to stop it flowing down the road, but it does stink terribly at times and I wouldn’t expect surface water to.I have had some building work done recently, there is a possibility that they washed loads of muck/ mortar down the drain, which may not have helped much at all.
Thanks for any advice/commentsAndy
Re: 2nd Air Admittance Valve failure in a month
mbge5amw wrote: Surely a few of you whitegoods engineers are plumbers anyway.
No!:lesson:
Plumbers have the good sense not to touch whitegoods as their trading skills earn more money to be messing with whitegoods. Whitegoods engineers only have basic knowledge about plumbing and little practical experience in that area.
Sounds to me like your drain is blocked by the way. Why not lift a drain cover outside then flush the loo with a couple of sheets of loo paper in the water and see if they flow down the pipe?
💡
Re: 2nd Air Admittance Valve failure in a month
Thanks for that Martin.
I don’t appear to have any sort of access cover on my property, but a phone call to the water board proved worthwhile.
Firstly it appears that responsibility for my drain was taken on by the water board in 1939, so no charges to me for clearing blockages.
Secondly it appears that work is underway at the house 3 doors down this afternoon, and this is likely to be related.Apparently the following explanation applies:
Under normal circumstances, you flush teh loo and positive pressure goes in front of your flushed water and negative pressure behind it.
The positive goes off down the drain system, or pops out from a neighbours open topped soil stack.
To prevent water being siphoned out of your traps on sinks etc by the negative pressure, tha AAV lets in some air to follow the flush down the pipework.In my situation it is possible that the blocked drain a few doors down means the positive pressure of the flush pushes the AAV quite tightly closed, so then it doesn’t open properly when it is needed to so cannot let air in after the flush, instead the air is sucked slowly through my bath trap.
I hope the work the drains people do this afternoon should sort all this out – if not then I’ll have to get the professionals out. (there are a lot of DIY jobs I’ll happily tackle, but sewerage is not on that list!)
Andy
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.