Why does a sink continue to clog every few months?

[cynatnite]

We've lived in this house for about a year now and every few months it gets clogged with grease. We rarely cook with shortening and the few times we do use oil, it all gets dumped in a bottle and tossed in the trash.

We're very careful about what goes down the sink considering how big of a problem there is. Our landlord employs this handyman type who I think is an idiot and today when he was here he talked to me like I didn't know my toe from my elbow.

I asked if it was possible, that the people who lived here before dumped so much grease down the sink and now it's backing up. Every time it gets cleaned out, more backs ups slowly until the pipe clog again.

My question was never answered (I suspect he doesn't know). This time the clog wasn't as bad as the others. The other times, the pipe under the sink going out of the house was completely full of impacted grease. I'm frustrated and pissed by being treated like a know-nothing girl.

My gut says there is a bigger problem going on here than your run-of-the-mill clog. Am I off-base about this?

[catmandu57]

1. Do you wash your hair at this sink"

If so that may be the culprit. Is the line shared with anyone else or is it only you? It may be that the fall of the drain pipe is too shallow.

[cynatnite]

2. Nope.

That's for the bathroom. My daughter and I have very thick hair. We put a thing in the bathtub that catches our hair and it gets cleaned out after every shower.

I'm getting with the landlord this evening and we'll get it worked out. He's a pretty reasonable guy. I've got a few ideas to share with him.

[eeyore]

3. You probably need to just replace the pipes

I just had to do this with my bathtub, and when they cut out the pipes I could see that they looked like disgusting clogged arteries. Basically, so much crap had build up in there that the water was trying to get through an opening the size of a 50 cent piece. :puke:

No matter what method I tried, it would always re-clog, and that was the issue. I tried all of the eco stuff, enzymes, boiling water with baking soda, and eventually brought out the big guns with lye and draino, all to no avail. Just too much build-up from decades of use.

It cost me about $250 to have my plumber just replace the entire run from the tub to the main waste line.

Mine looked like this, only worse.