Help! Very strange bathroom problem!

[usregimechange]

My bathtub is bubbling up water. It normally drains the water but it bubbled up and filled the tub half full. What could make it do this? I hope it doesn't do it anymore or I will have a house full of water.

[Zephyrbird]

1. HOLY MONKEY, CALL THE PLUMBER!!

I had something similar and ended up with the sewer backed up in the house!!

If you have a septic tank, time to call Mike Rowe and the honeywagon and have it pumped ASAP.

[usregimechange]

2. Do you suppose he would make a house call at night?

[Ptah]

6. She might.

[IndianaJones]

3. did this happen when another source was draining? nt.

[usregimechange]

4. Yes, washer, also just took a bath and dishwasher was going too

[IndianaJones]

5. did everything eventually drain?

if so, you probably have a slow drain and its backing up in the lowest drain.

[usregimechange]

9. Yeah, it is drained now

[Zephyrbird]

7. Whew! Maybe you'll get lucky.

Check it in about 10-15 minutes and see. Yeah, some will make an emergency visit (take it from me), but it costs a freakin arm and a leg.

GOOD LUCK GOOD LUCK!!!

[Indi Guy]

8. Is it your own structure, or a shared townhouse/apt.?

[usregimechange]

10. She is ours

[grasswire]

11. be careful

You might want to get a plumber's snake tomorrow and run it down each drain to make sure there isn't a blockage.

How old is the house? A plumber told me this year, after we had horrible sewer problems the week we moved in, that in older homes the appliances dump water faster than the drain pipe can handle it, especially if you are using multiple things that dump water. We have to rotate laundry, dishwasher, showers, etc. I will not ever forget standing in the basement doing laundry and seeing a shower of sewer water come three feet high out of the floor drain when someone flushed the toilet.

[porphyrian]

12. Isn't that normal in a very strange bathroom? I mean, that's barely strange at all.

It sounds like you have a clog somewhere down the line that is making water back up into your tub. Someone will probably have to run a "snake" down there to unclog it.

Possible causes:
- old pipes can get crushed/fill with dirt/have tree roots grow into them
- someone used an enormous amount of toilet paper/eats very little fiber and used your toilet
- a potato from the future employed time-travel technology to play a prank on you (and, really, this is the only answer that would make your bathroom qualify as "very strange").

[Kutjara]

13. Is the house built on an ancient Indian burial ground?

Do you periodically hear disembodied voices shout "get out!"?
Are there unexplained noises around the house, especially at night?
Does the word "REDRUM" periodically appear on doors or walls?
Is there a weird bladed-glove contraption stuffed inside an old boiler in the basement?

If any of these are the case, you're actually living in a bad horror movie.

[Breeze54]

14. Did you wash socks in that load?

Missing any? :P

"It normally drains the water but it bubbled up"

So does mine!!! :rofl:

Hope you get this fixed asap. What a bummer.

[puerco-bellies]

15. Look for common lines

Does the tub and sink pipes join before they get to the main waste line? The reason the tub is filling is because the tub is lower then what ever line is backing up, and the clogged line is closer to the main line then the bath. The pipe that is clogged shares the bath line and assuming it is not the main sewer line (usually a 4" pipe) you can run a plumbing snake down the next closest line that has a clean out. A clean out is an access opening and looks like a cap with a square protruding from the surface. It is normally on a vertical pipe, and usually under a sink. If the bath in question is the lowest opening farthest from the main sewer, snake each line working your way "downstream", using clean outs or removing the toilet/s. Do not run the snake down the bowl of the toilet.

Home Depot rents out motorized drain snakes for about 50 a day as opposed to 150 minimum for a plumber to clear a drain using a drain snake. For a normal sized house a 75 footer should be more then enough, and a 50' should be enough if the clog is close to where ever the clean out is located. If your house is set way back from the street and all the drains are clogging you might need a 100 footer.

Do be careful with the motorized snake. Just give the motor little pulses, another words don't run it continuously, switch the motor on and off just enough to keep the thing turning, and most important don't allow any slack to gather between the snake and the pipe it is going in to. Slack will twist up and start flailing about. Set newspaper on the floor in the work area because when you pull the snake, it will have the waste water residue and maybe some of what ever is clogging the pipe coating the snake. Glove should be worn but be very careful not to let them get caught in the snake. If your just pulsing the motor you won't have a problem.

Been there, done that, good luck.

[Jamastiene]

16. Oh, shit. You got problems.

You are in need of a plumber, it would seem....perhaps to snake yer drain. No sexual reference there. That's what they really do. It's fun to watch, from afar. It's fascinating, really, as long as you don't get too close. Call a plumber, pronto. That's sewage coming back atcha. Been there, done that. :eyes:

[Blue Diadem]

17. We used to have that problem once in a while at our first house, it came from

the spaghetti size tree roots that had penetrated the clay tiles leading to the city sewer system. You have something that is blocking the line somewhere..but not enough to block completely, thus the slow draining of the water that had backed up. My son had it at his home and my daughter's former in-laws had a similar situation with their septic system.


Call a plumber or Rotor-rooter if you're not into DIY. If it does turn out to be tree roots, there are treatments you can buy to help keep them dissolved. We began using the treatments in our first house and never had another problem.

[RebelOne]

18. That happened to me once and it was the sewage line backing up. n/t

[Frank Cannon]

19. This happened to me once.

The dishwater started draining and a geyser of water shot out of the toilet. The sewer line was blocked going out to the front curb.

It took a call to a local "roto-rooter"-type service, 30 minutes, and about $100 to solve the problem permanently.