A house in Brier had a drain that kept running slow no matter how often it was cleared. In January, Nick and Jeremy found the reason in the crawlspace: about twenty-five feet of old galvanized drain line, narrowed from the inside by years of buildup. They replaced the whole run with larger ABS pipe in a single morning visit.
What We Did
Galvanized steel drain pipe does not usually fail all at once. It rusts and collects buildup on its inside walls, a little at a time, until a pipe that started out at an inch and a half across carries only a fraction of that, and every clearing buys a few weeks before the drain slows again. That was the situation under this Brier house.
Rather than clear the old pipe one more time, Nick and Jeremy cut out about twenty-five feet of the galvanized line and replaced it with new two-inch ABS, a size larger than the old pipe, so the drain has more room than it ever had and nothing inside to catch on. The new run follows the foundation wall under the floor, and where it meets the existing pipe it is joined with a banded coupling.
The work carries our two-year warranty.
Why It Matters
- A drain that keeps slowing down is telling you about the pipe. When clearing only helps for a while, the problem is usually the inside of the line narrowing, not a single clog.
- Galvanized drains close themselves off. Rust and buildup cling to the rough inside of old steel pipe, and the opening gets smaller every year.
- Going up a size helps. Replacing an inch-and-a-half galvanized run with two-inch ABS gives the drain more capacity than it had even when it was new.
- Replace the run, not the worst foot. Galvanized pipe of the same age tends to fail along its length, so one clean replacement beats a string of patches.
Why Brier
Brier is a small, almost entirely residential city tucked between Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace and Bothell, and it has been its own city since February 1965, when residents voted to incorporate rather than be annexed by a neighbor. Its wooded lots hold houses from several decades, and the older ones can still have galvanized pipe under the floor. Our Lynnwood shop on 204th Street SW is only a few minutes away, which makes a morning visit like this one easy to fit in.
Call About a Slow Drain
If a drain in your house keeps slowing down after it has been cleared, or you know the pipes under your floor are galvanized, call for a free estimate, or request a callback. We look under the house and tell you what we find.
More: drain and pipe services · whole-home repipes · plumbing in Lynnwood · plumbing in Mountlake Terrace · a Kingsgate drain repipe · a crawlspace drain repair in Lynnwood · why galvanized water lines fail