Julie P. wrote:

Hi, my tub is clogged up. draining has gotten gradually worse over the
months to the point it brarely drains at all now and shower water is left
standing for days if i do not manually use a bucket to remove the water.

I have closet auger, the thin and long kind meant for sink pipes. the
problem is the spirally end of the auger (the part that is meant to hook
onto debris) will not fit into the tub drain opening since the house is very
old, and there is a strange horizontal metal bar going across the diameter
of the drain. so i can't even get the auger into the drain to begin with.
and drano isn't working.

thanks for any advice!

julie




I read a tip somewhere about using a length of steel cable as an auger.
That trick might have included
putting the cable into a power drill. Have you tried using a length of
malleable wire to see if you can
hook into the offending object? When my shower suddenly began to drain
slowly, it is what I used.
Careful not to use wire stiff enough to get stuck. I took out an
amazing glob of hair. Yuck! The
drain seemed fine one day, and very slow the next. Before I finished up
the project, I dropped one
of the screws for the drain cover down the drain. Hubby got a neat,
telescoping thingy with a magnet
to fish it out with. When I first began probing the drain, it seemed
like the wire went down too far and
hit something soft .... I was afraid that there was a hole in the pipe
and I was hitting dirt, but it was
just a mass of hair. Good luck.

Is the horizontal bar part of the stopper mechanism? Got an access
panel to get at it? That could be
what hair might hang onto.