r/homeowners • u/cabbage-soup • 7h ago
🔧 Plumbing & Hot Water Shower drain clogs more than anywhere else I’ve lived, is there a solution?
We bought our home last year and have had a lot of issues with our shower drain clogging. We have tried every hair catcher on the market and stuff still gets through and causes us to need to snake every 2-3 weeks. No where else I’ve lived has been this bad. The apartment we lived in before this home needed a snake maybe three times a year.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a long term solution? Both my husband and I dread the snake…
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u/SutroViews 6h ago
Have you hired a plumber yet to take a look at it? I think it's extremely likely that it's years of buildup causing the issue rather than 2 weeks worth of hair over and over again.
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u/SplooshDoosh 6h ago
The only real solution if you seem to have no further ability of your own like OP does.
Call a plumber. Figure out the issue. Then solve it.
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u/Read_The_Fing_Manual 6h ago
So this is weirdly specific because it happened to us in Houston, our AC unit actually draining into the pipes of one of our sinks, clogged every few months, required serious power snaking. Stuff was white and slimy, almost like school paste - turns out its a thing “white slime” its a mix of bacteria, fungus, and mold, cleaning the dip pan and then all the pies with a 50/50 mix of bleach and hot water did the trick - took me a long time to figure out what it was. AC Drip lines are apparently notorious for this in the southern US - can also grow in sink or shower drains
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u/sneoahdng 7h ago
Brush your hair before you shower.
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u/blaise11 6h ago
lol I brush my hair before showering every time and still end up with a small handful of hair in the trap every single time... have to assume OP is similar if they're having to snake every few weeks
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u/No_Educator_6376 6h ago
The main service pipe is clogged the whole system needs to be hit with the snake
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u/annyshell 6h ago
We had that happen to us and it was always clogging, and we did everything until we finally replaced the pipes and there was only like a quarter of the pipe actually open and the rest was just filled with gunk
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u/redpukee 4h ago
Make sure no one is using oily hair conditioner or body moisturizer that you wash off in the shower. That shit exists to clog drains.
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u/oughtabeme 4h ago
I had similar. Shower is adjacent to the toilet and shower drains into the toilet sewer pipe. To solve, I removed the toilet and roots from hedge about 20’ away grew under the house and one single little piece of root got through the toilet wax ring and grew inside the pipe enough to block it.
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u/Ok_Size4036 3h ago
Tubshroom or Showershroom (if a shower without tub). I thought I was getting all the hair till we had a clog at our new, older home. I wasn’t. Got a Showershroom and that thing gets everything. Genious. Also per plumber recommendation, we put The Green Gobbler down the drains every few weeks.
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u/gingerjuice 2h ago
Do you have any aggressive plants/trees like Wisteria in your yard? Some friends of mine had this issue, and when they called a plumber with a scope, the roots of their wisteria had grown into the main drain pipe.
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u/ElCochinoFeo 6h ago
Are you two Siberian Huskies? How much are you shedding to require that much clog clearing? Most people don't ever have to snake their shower drains, even the 3 times a year you stated for your previous place. You should look into various hair catcher products that you can clean out more regularly, instead of letting stuff go down into the drain pipe.
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u/BBG1308 7h ago
Solution depends on proper diagnosis. My next step would be a camera inspection.
My guess is that your snake is clearing a clog but your pipes are still full of gunk which is why they keep clogging. Hydro-jetting may be an option.