I went to bed last night with a feeling of hope; I let the washer finish its drain and spin cycle, and both the cat room drain and the drain under the washer remained bone-dry. Hm, I thought. Perhaps that Max Gel I poured down the drain when it was standing water after it overflowed the last time finally did it and dissolved the clog.
Mind you, I hadn't run any water, nor had I started the washer again, which I will have to do yet again because the one remaining towel I had was used to soak up the previous overflow, and the overflow also had a fair amount of bleach in it from the decloggers. On a black towel. Again, sigh. I had to throw it in with the others which were already half-washed, as I had nowhere else to put it, so the previously clean towels in the washer are now once more soiled.
I don't really care, to be honest with you -- a towel is a towel, and even if it's discolored in spots because of contact with bleach, once it's washed clean it'll still work the same as it always did. Not everything I own has to be pretty -- take a look at my car, for example.
I was previously thinking that, before bed, I should once more get dressed and go to Walmart again in the night in order to get more supplies if/when they will be necessary, but after the washer finished draining and spinning with no issue or backwash, I changed my mind. If I need to get that stuff, I'll go get it later today, but here's the plan for today:
1. Before I do anything else or run any more water, shower. With the drain plug sealed. This will allow me to get that out of the way and clean myself, and when I drain it 30 seconds at a time it will be a good test for the drains themselves -- if they bubble up again I'll know the clog isn't fixed. If they don't, well, the clog may still not be completely gone, but as it'll be the only water I've run through the pipes in over twelve hours, it'll let me gauge how much of it is still a problem. As you may recall, I was able to dump the entire wash cycle's worth of water from the washer yesterday when I washed the towels the first time -- a good 15 gallons or more -- with no issue and no backup whatsoever once I put the first foamer down the pipes. If I can shower and let the water drain completely with no issue, that'll be roughly the same amount of water down the drains, more or less.
2. If it does back up again, before I do anything else, I let it dry out and apply the foamer and/or the rest of the Max Gel to help kick it along, dump the bottle of bleach down the drain(s), and go out to get more supplies. I have to get stamps anyway, so it's not like that would be the only reason I'd leave the house. It's warm today, too, before the snow hits tomorrow. Yes, more fucking snow.
See? Not fucking kidding.
3. Repeat the process from yesterday; run the laundry, see how much/if it backs up, and each time it does (if it does), continue to pour uncloggers down all holes, rinsing with water and alternating with doses of bleach. Again, it's all draining out, even if slowly at times -- so everything I'm putting down the drains must be hitting the clog(s) as it flows through. It's only a matter of time until it's all washed out. This is the only logical thought process I can have on the matter.
When I got up this afternoon, I poured the last foamer down the drain under the washer and let it sit for well over an hour. I debated on doing this, but I wanted to do everything I could before I showered and tested the washer again, in hopes that anything that could be kicked out or dissolved with the last foamer I have would be. I then went upstairs and took a shower, making sure the stopper was pulled closed, and showered as quickly as possible to minimize water use -- if it's going to overflow when I drain it, after all, I wanted to make sure it would overflow as little as possible. There's probably four inches of water in the fairly small tub; that's maybe twenty gallons or so, give or take, by eyeballing it. That's slightly more than a full washer load uses, I'm guessing.
I also came to a big, problematic debate here -- once I flush out the drain under the washer, do I test the washer first or do I drain the tub first? My original plan, as you know, was to drain the tub first and to see what happens with that, but that's also more water than the washer produces (again, I'm guessing) and if it begins to overflow, I can't immediately stop the tub like I can stop the washer -- I'd have to run back upstairs, burning about ten seconds when it would be overflowing through one or both drains. On the other hand, I don't want to let dirty shower water sit in the tub upstairs any longer than I have to.
After hemming and hawwing for a while, I decided to flush the drain and start the washer load again. If it overflowed or backed up, I thought, I could shut it down and use the rest of the Max Gel on the drain again before continuing, and unlike the shower drain, I can control the water flow of the washer. Later, once the water levels go down (if it was still clogged) I could empty the tub little by little.
I flushed the drain and ran the washer load, again, full and hot water. First cycle went beautifully -- wash and drain. Not a drop of overflow in either drain; both stayed dry. I thought maybe the foamer had finally fully worked and knocked out whatever was in the line. I let the second cycle start, the rinse cycle, which fills the washer again, but it is much shorter -- I'm guessing about five minutes. Remember this, as it's important.
When the rinse cycle completed and began to drain, I thought: Okay, here it is, the moment of truth.
It drained well. I watched it. I stopped it about halfway through the drain cycle, and I'm glad I did -- the moment I hit the stop button it had started to come back up into the drain. It drained out quickly, though. I checked the drain in the cat room and it had some water in it as well, but wasn't even a quarter of the way filled up (that drain is bowl-shaped, not a grate, and larger). When I stopped the washer, everything receded quickly.
Hm, I thought. So the drainage system can take about thirty or so gallons at a time, roughly, before it's full and backs up. This is, despite what it may seem, good news. This means that the clog has either been mostly broken up or that it's been pushed down the line far enough to where it will take more water, and more time, to back things up. It also means that once the water has been drained out of the lines, an average washer load (not a super-big load) or average shower should not overflow the drains anymore. In essence, I am slowly winning this battle. I think it overflowed again on the drain/spin cycle about halfway through it because it is much shorter -- there is still water in the lines draining out from the wash cycle.
I did nothing else with any uncloggers; the water isn't standing, but draining almost as quickly as it backs up. That means that there's good flow going already, and once the pipes are emptied out (I'll give 'em another hour or so) I'll finish draining the washer and let it complete its cycle, as that should be more than enough time to dump the last 5-8 gallons or so out of the washer for its drain/spin cycle. And maybe that water that's quickly flowing out will help break up the clog more and/or move it further out of the system. Couldn't hurt, right?
After that, I'll wait another two or three hours and slowly drain the tub before bed. I've already showered (and don't plan to shower again in the morning before I leave the house) and the towels were the only laundry I had, so normal water use of washing my hands, flushing the toilet, or running the dishwasher (which uses very little water, actually) when I need to sometime this coming week shouldn't clog anything up, and I'll watch the drains when I shower and drain the tub over the next several days. What I'm saying is that basically, for the moment, the battle is over until the next time I have to do laundry or run a lot of water at one time, which shouldn't be for another week or so (read: when I have time to deal with it if it acts up again).
Again, it's not completely over; I will still probably have to go get more unclogger products, and I will still have to keep an eye on everything, and I may still have to call my landlord at some point over the next month or so if I come to a point where I'm no longer making headway on the issue. But, for right now, I've come to a stopping point; I'm making some sort of progress, and I know how much water I can actually run down the drains at any given time before they back up, which is a lot more than I could before. Not to mention that I still have half a bottle of Max Gel and almost a full bottle of bleach. I should be able to win this fight outright eventually.
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