My Old House
Basement Drain Maintenance

Well, thing have settled down from the holidays.

It’s been cold-as-heck out there and I’ve been doing very little for the house.

However, today it’s suppossed to get up to 55 degrees (yippee!), so I started doing a few minor things.

One thing that I did this morning was take a look at our basement drain. Gee, I should have gotten a photo, but why gross everybody out?

We’ve had a small, slowly growing problem with this drain backing up as the washing machine drains into it. It’ s not critical, but it’s something to pay attention to.

The grate was a rusty thing… with many of its holes clogged somewhat with filthy fibers and there was some black gunk underneath it. I scraped off both sides of it and cleaned out the holes. I couldn’t see very far down into the hole, but it too seemed to have a lot of fibrous gunk on the sides.

This got me thinking: Is there something I can pour down this drain regularly to prevent this from happening?

Probably not, since the fibers are from clothing, I’m sure. But perhaps, for those fibers that do slip through and go on down into the actual drain-pipe… perhaps there’s something I can do for that?

I really want to prolong the life-span of this drain, of course. I don’t want to be getting a back-hoe in here anytime soon to replace it.

So, I’ve posted my questions on the Yahoo “Fixer Uppers” board (see my links for this blog)… We’ll see what people have to say. I’ll let you know.

Thanks!

-= Dave =-