On 17 Aug 2004 09:33:50 -0700, Ringo Langly wrote:

I'll try to blow some water and bleach through the pipes this
afternoon and maybe that'll work. Thanks for that suggestion.

I personally wouldn't put bleach in until I had the clog out - particularly
if using compressed air or water pressure to clear the clog. Bleach is not
good for the skin or eyes and you just might wind up splashing things around
a bit with either of the above two methods of clearing the clog.

I still have a concern with the way the lateral pipe going to the
overflow tub from A/C drain pipe has no angle. This causes the
drainage water from A/C to often flow into the overflow tub instead of
down the drain pipe. My 'solution' to this after I moved in last year
was stuffing a rag into the pipe since the water was starting to rust
the bults and bottom of my waterheater.

Putting bleach into the drain line will cause the rusting to happen faster if
it gets into the water heater pan and onto the water heater, so fixing this
backflow problem should be a fairly high priority after the clog removal.

But for now the main focus is getting the drainage line cleared out.

After clearing the clog, I'd suggest that you go ahead and see what you can
do to the water heater pan to keep the AC water from flowing into it. Be sure
to turn the water heater off before draining it if you plan to raise it.

Looks to me like the 3/4 inch plywood underneath the pan suggestion would
work fine, just make sure that the T fitting isn't raised the full amount
above the floor when you raise the pan - it the line is thin wall PVC, it'll
bend a fair amount and give some slope between the pan and T. If the T
fitting wants to raise the same amount as the pan when you raise it, you can
push the T downward and put some weight on that end of the short line to keep
it that way, or get the line between the pan and T hot. With the weight, the
pipe will eventually keep the downward slope on it's own, or you can speed
the process with heat - I used a hair dryer on high heat to get a small
amount of bend into some thin wall PVC a while back.

The fella that installed my AC unit recommended pouring a cup of bleach down
the evaporator coil drain every fall after I'm through using the AC for the
year, not in the spring as was suggested in another post. Dunno if it really
matters, but , to my way of thinking, the gunk that accumulates in the pipe
would be softer and thus easier to dissolve and flush away in the fall before
it dries out completely over the winter. That's not what I've been told, just
the reasoning I figure for the instructions the AC man gave me.

Also, if you decide to use the option offered in an earlier post of cutting
the drain line and putting in a coupling, I'd suggest that you glue the
bottom side of the coupling, but not the top. That way there should be no
possibility of leakage as the water flows down the line. With no glue to seal
the lower connection, there is a possibility of leakage since the coupling
fits over the lower pipe instead of inside it - a small chance admittedly,
but I believe in taking Murphy's Law into account.

Later, Mike
(substitute strickland in the obvious location to reply directly)
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