Gurgling Drains? Check This!

In this article, we are going to discuss a quick tip if you are experiencing gurgling drains. 

If you are a contractor and are ever up in your customer’s attic and you notice something is not right, you should point it out to them. They will appreciate it!

This issue

We were up in an attic recently and noticed that the plumbing vent was pitched the wrong way. We think they probably had a new roof put on at some point, and they switched the flashing out on the roof to a frost-free one. A metal flashings that goes over the whole top of the pipe and the pipe was probably too tall to fit.

Some way or another this pipe got unhooked, and it got pushed down and now fills with rainwater because it’s not sloped right.

We asked the customer about it and they mentioned their bathtub gurgles. It’s been doing that for a few years. They had somebody out to diagnose it, and they couldn’t figure it out.

If you see something like this, mention it to your customers. They’ll appreciate it.

The Fix

Now let’s fix the issue. Here’s that pipe that we were looking at in the attic. We’re guessing because this is an addition, on this side of the house, that this is for the master bathroom that they added.

When they added this, they probably had a standard pipe flashing like the picture above where the height didn’t matter.

We’re assuming maybe they had a re-roof done, and the roofer got rid of this open one and wanted to put this frost-free one on. This pipe is too tall. So maybe the roofer or somebody else unhooked the pipe, and it slid down so that it fit on it. Which created that trap in the attic that we just looked at.

We’ve marked the height that we need here for the frost-free one.

This one should look like the one behind us.

Now we are going to cut the pipe.

And we will ream the top. We use the Milwaukee Reaming Pen* for doing the inside first. *(If you purchase from the link we earn a commission)

Followed by the DEB4 Reed Deburring Tool. (If you purchase from the link we earn a commission)

Now this should slide over the top and we can just get this lead to form around that fitting. We kind of mold it around there and grab a socket, so we can tighten the nut up.

Conclusion

That’s all there is to it. The customer should not have any gurgling from the bathtub anymore.

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