Shower drain trap disaster....

[TasMan]

Had a bit of a disaster this morning with our wetroom floor drain. The drain was backing up and I had previously cleaned out the grate and trap a couple of times before with no problems. As usual, I removed the two screws from the grate and then unscrewed the centre grating to pull out the grating/baffle tube to clean it out. After cleaning these parts I went to re-fit the centre assembly and found the whole pipe/trap assembly had dropped below the floor...! Luckily it is ground floor with concrete solum otherwise it would have been a mess with the excess water in the shower tray.

I now figure that I have unscrewed the actual trap assembly without realising it, and that the previous times I have been lucky that the seal has stuck to the underside of the gulley and not dropped down. I tried to pull the pipe back up with bent wire hooked into the trap on a bit of string but the grating/tube I have removed to clean is about 4" long and the thread is at the top of it, so the tube hits on my hook before the thread section reaches the trap.... :-(

I thought that the trap assembly should be fitted to the gulley and the centre tube should be removable to allow cleaning, should the pipe have been supported from below to stop it dropping ? Just seems not a very good idea ?

Any hints on an easy fix as I can only access the dropped section through the small 2" hole in the gulley.....

Am thinking I will need to pull up the vinyl and cut a hole in the floor to get my hand in to push the pipe/trap back up to the gulley.....not ideal at all..... Need to get the shower drain back working tonight....

Cheers
Dave

 

[Phil]

Is this a vinyl floored wetroom then?

I don't fit wetrooms yet but if its anything like the trap on a shower tray I always silicone the trap to the tray to seal it in place and to stop it leaking if a plunger is used.

Can you not lift up the floorboards in another room to crawl under, or is there no room?

 

[TasMan]

Managed to get it sorted with minimal fuss.....at 6am and being half asleep it looked like a major problem....but.....when I got back home last night I discovered the centre tube does indeed pull out of the threaded section (like a sink plug). It probably hadn't been removed in a long time so the pull out tube wasn't budging, but some careful tapping and pulling prised them apart. I then got some stiff wire and hooked the dropped trap below the floor and pulled it up to its seating and dropped the threaded 'nut' part over the wire and tightened it up. A smear of silicone grease round the O ring of the pull out section and it was back in place.... Was very glad I didn't have to start pulling up the floor as there is no access to crawl from other areas.

 

[jase158]

for future reference to anybody else who may need it, these traps should be supported from underneath for this exact reason. there should be no movement up or down, just a little bit left or right

 

[TasMan]

Thanks Jase, my thoughts exactly. If I hadn't found a way round it I would have had the floor up nearby and wedged a chunk of wood under the drain pipe to stop any chance of it dropping in future. Not a proper fix but it wouldn't have dropped again...!