More and more we are called to homes and businesses with slow or stopped up drains that have no clean out access fittings available. This makes it extremely difficult to properly snake out the drain.
Many older buildings were erected during a time when clean out fittings were not required by code. This serves as a perfect example of shortsightedness.
How was the drain supposed to be cleaned out when it stopped up which is inevitable?
Since the mid 90’s clean out fittings have been required on all bottom floor fixtures, those on a concrete slab but if there isn’t a clean out we must install one.
This involves opening the wall, whatever material it is composed of and installing the clean out fitting and patching the wall afterword.
It truly baffles us that no clean out fitting was installed when the piping was done originally because it would have been very easy to do at the time.Needless to say the customer is not happy when told it will cost $500 to $1000 to do this work when all we are trying to do is snake out a drain line that takes only a trip and machine charge, $200 to $300 at most.The only reason we can think of why clean out fittings were not installed originally would be that no one wanted clean out plugs visible sticking out of the wall.
Some things are necessary, however and clean out plugs fall into this category.
It’s not even a matter of pay us now or pay us later, installing the proper fitting when the piping is first done costs almost nothing.
