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Hello out there! I see there's not a lot of activity on this forum, but here goes.
I have 4 drain vent pipes on my roof, all unscreened. They are full to the top with acorns, oak leaves, long pineneedles, etc. I made a small loop on the end of a heavy gauge wire and began pulling the acorns out one by one. About 18 inches down I hit an impacted area. I poured a pitcher of hot water in and jabbed the straight end of the wire around and was able to pull out the remains of a dead bird and some acorns that had sprouted. The water did not flow thru so I poured it all in quickly and more debris came out the top in liquid. It stunk courtesy of the deceased bird and I gave up to call the local plumbing supply place to ask what the pros do.
Many phone calls later, no one has ever heard of my problem. The hardware store sold me a bottle of sulfuric acid to try to break up the clogs. Before I resort to that, we are going to try our shop vac and then the water hose with the brass nozzle on jet to see if we can break it up and hopefully send most of the debris up out of the pipe instead of sending it down into the septic line and possibly clogging THAT. Right now, we have adequate flushing, even tho the vents are solidly blocked. They must have been blocked for years.
I hope someone out there has had experience with this and can advise me. I will let you know how it goes in case anyone else can benefit from my experience. Thanks for reading this.
Me again. Finished the job, and it was interesting. Used a little (1/4 cup) of acid on the worst vent. It worked ok, but I was paranoid about it eating through weak spots so I returned to using the water hose on jet. Took several hours, blasting away with the waterjet. Left the pipe full of water, hopeing it would saturate the remaining material and it would be easy the next morning. Not so! Water level had not changed so was in for a fight. About 1 1/2 hours of more blasting and the last of the clog was ejected into the bathroom sink. It was the remains of another dead bird.
I know this story is confusing. We figure our unscreened vents were the granaries for very industrious squirrels or woodpeckers. They were crammed with acorns, many sprouted in the pipe. This vent in closest to our furnace, which shakes the whole house and the shaking must have compacted all the material in the pipe over the years.
Anyway, it was quite the job. We covered all 4 vent pipes with 1/4 inch wire mesh screen(hardware cloth) and wrapped rust-proof wire around tightly. We don't want the industrious creature to be able to pry the screens off.
We never wish to do this job again, though it was a thrill to finally break through. The clog in the sink and it's splatter all over the mirror was lovely!
The sinks drain well (they had before the de-clogging) and the toilet flushes with much greater authority.
Hope this will help someone.
