Our 100+ year old Brooklyn house had been remodeled many, many times before we bought it 10 years ago. We have had consistent leaking on roofs and in walls. We have also had flooding in our tiny backyard. New roofs should fix the ceiling leaks.

We continue to have leaks in a wall in a basement level apartment. The outside drains that lead to the city backup on heavy rain. The plumber says there must be a clogged trap and it needs to be cleaned. While there should be a trap on the basement level near the outside drain that leads to the city sewer, we have never seen a trap. Nor did the contractor that recently gutted the apartment. You can't clean a trap if it doesn't exist. The plumber insists that there is a trap.

The plumber ran his commercial snake into the drain and after 8 feet it stopped. He tried several times. We then had a snake with a camera down the drain. At 8 feet you could see standing water and what appears to be a trap. The plumber insists that there is a trap and without locating and removing the stoppage we will continue to have issues. Locating the trap means ripping up tile and flooring.

A roofer is not convinces that there is a stopped trap and that the commercial snake should be able to pass through the trap.

Is this true? Can a commercial sized head on a snake pass through a trap? Do you believe there must be a trap despite never having seen it?

Thoughts?

Thanks
Paul

i would get some flourescent dye and put it down you drain. i believe you have a leak somewhere not a clogged trap.
in any case, it is required that you have some way of snaking out the main drain from your house.
if you can remove a toilet and snake from there they let that pass.
chances are that this problem will not go away by simply cleaning the trap.

1. It sounds like the trap is there
2. can a snake pass the trap? Not usually, not without a lot of effort and access to both sides of the trap; you will never get a professional snake with appropriate cutter to pass a whole house trap and come back. If you get it past the trap, you will have to excavate to remove it.
3. If the line is backing up with heavy rains, the trap is irrelevant anyhow. Water can flow both ways through a house trap. The only way to stop city backup is with a back flow preventer designed for sewer lines.
4. If the plumber says there is a trap, and the camera backs up that statement, there is a trap. Whether the trap is accessible or has had concrete poured on top of the clean out caps is a different matter. I have had to break concrete more than once to access buried house traps. I have seen walls built on top of them, and hidden behind walls on many occasions.
5. If the water is coming from a drain line or through the wall, the solutions are more varied depending on the problem. I would think that a covered or clogged floor drain would be more likely if the city isn't backing up sewer, and water is coming in through the walls. If the whole area is flooding, there isn't a lot that you can do to stop the problem, but eliminating the basement apartment would be prudent.

edit- Looking at your post again, I think that the information may be a little jumbled. I may have the wrong idea about what you have going on, I'm not entirely sure that I am picturing what you are describing.



Edited 1 times.