I am so glad my brother in law told Clint and I about this product because it was what resolved a tough clogged pipe in Brandon's new house. Neither of us had seen one before, so we are telling you about it to hopefully save someone the trouble and expense of a plumber's visit.
Brandon's toilet started backing up. Then, his tub would not drain. Then, his bathroom and kitchen sinks would not drain. We plungered. We dumped drain opening chemicals down. We used a plumbing snake. Then, we rented a power auger. We augered the toilet. We dug up the septic tanks. Yes, tanks. Brandon has two septic tanks and water drains into both of them through pipes, but there are no plumbing clean outs.
We took the toilet off. We augered from the toilet pipe until we could see the auger end in the septic tank. We augered from the septic to as far as we could go to the toilet. We augered the vent pipe. We sent a fish tape down as far as we could into the tub. We sent an old water hose with running water up the pipe to see if we could flush anything out. Then we put the hose down the toilet. Nothing fixed it.
Richard asked me how the plumbing issue was going through text. I told him. He told me he'd text Clint about a plumbing bladder.
We found a bladder at ACE. ACE's price was $7 more than Lowe's, but it saved us about 45 minutes of daylight to get it from there.
We put the bladder down the pipe, and let it do it's job. We saw small bits and knew it was doing something. We would check the toilet drain pipe after a good while by taking it out and adding water to the toilet drain which would fill back up and drain a bit but not as fast as it should. So, we knew we were getting to it but didn't have all of it yet. We took it out and checked it three times before it finally broke free with about half an hour of plungering the tub at the same time. The clog came out in small chunks at first and then bigger chunks and finally, in a sludgy mass followed by bigger chunks and then smaller chunks.
Toilet paper clogged the pipe.
I think Brandon will give up the softer, cushiony toilet paper in favor of the Asbell standby--the rougher but plumbing friendly, POM.
