When is it time to call the experts with a tub drain clog?
I am a landlord and do a fair amount of drain snaking in older and recalcitrant plumbing as part of my work. I am not an official plumber, however. It sounds like you are snaking the tub correctly: The usual procedure is to remove the lever thing that works the stopper and feed the snake down through there. It doesn’t usually require a huge distance — most of the time, the bathroom sink and bathtub drains feed into the big drain for the toilet (it’s 3″ or 4″ diameter pipe) as soon as possible. Kitchen drains frequently run quite a distance with smaller diameter pipe but bathroom fixture drains generally hit the 3″ or 4″ sewer line at the nearest toilet. What it sounds like is happening, with the failure of the snake to progress, is that you’re hitting something (a bend in the pipe?) before you get to the big sewer line. Look at the layout of your bathroom and consider the distance from the tub drain to the toilet drain. That’s probably (usually) the distance of the small diameter drai
