Drain outside of bathtub clogged? It floods when draining bathtub but not when showering.

I’m in desperate need of advice! Has anyone else had this problem?

The problem is this: the drain *inside* the bathtub seems fine— I can’t find any hair or clog. When showering, the water goes down the drain with no problems at all. But the last two times I’ve taken a bath, the floor drain *outside* the tub overflows and floods my entire bathroom floor.

Last night was the second time out of about 10 baths that this happened. The last time I took a bath the same thing happened and I thought it was a one-off because the inner drain seems to be working fine.

I took the cover off and saw that the hole that the rubber-covered pipe was taped (not entirely) with some sort of green clear painters tape. There was also a lot of grey slime around the hole. I removed the tape and wiped away a lot of the slime but it didn’t make much of an improvement. I tried slowly draining the water from the bathtub and noticed each time the hole would fill up and sloooooowly drain away.

What can I do? Would liquid drain cleaner work?

6 comments
  1. If the clog is deep inside the pipe you probably need to run a rooter through it or call a plumber and have them take care of it.

  2. It sounds like you have a constriction somewhere down below that can handle the flow from running the water (e.g. the shower), but can’t handle the sudden rush from draining the tub.

    I would guess that liquid drain cleaner would not be particularly helpful, because like the liquid from the shower, it would just pass by the constriction. You can try cleaning it yourself with something [like this](https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B07CN9LGS8), but it’s probably easier to just call a cleaning service (e.g. duskin or the like) or a plumber.

  3. We had the same problem recently. We used the liquid drain cleaner and also the spring rotating thing that you can get in Amazon when you search “Drain cleaner”. Both didn’t work completely.
    Then we went to Konan (home center) and got some product in toilet section which had white powder in white container. The instruction said to put five lid full of that powder around the drain and pour about 500ml of water above 40 degree celsius. Wait for 30 minutes. And pour plenty of water.

    We did that twice and the clog’s gone!

  4. I had this in my first apartment. I ended up getting one of those long wire drain cleaners with a brush on the end and pulled out a huge clot of hair from lower in the pipe.

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