I'll Do It Myself

 Some of you may remember the recent shower saga--the delay in installation and subsequent issues. Just when we thought it was ready to go, we hit yet another snag as briefly described at the top of this post. It was leaking and not draining. From there, we went back into waiting mode. F ordered the missing part for the shower door which was needed to fix the leak. When it arrived, she contacted Plumber Guy, who replied 'Great to know.' Well, yes, it's great to know that it's here and it'd also be great to know when you'll be here to put it on. The day finally arrived. Plumber Guy came, commenting that we must be sick of seeing his face. What could I say to that? On the one hand, I am genuinely tired of needing to see his face. On the other, since his face is needed, I am not sorry to see it. He went up and put the part on the door. F appeared. He tried to address the slow drain issue. He showed F various parts. He left, saying that we were good to go and that one day he would make that bracket and put that on to stabilize the wobbly shower sides. Later that evening, Bill and I went up to adjust the water. Since it can't be controlled from inside the shower, we figured we'd better get it close to where we wanted it so we wouldn't have to do it in the morning. Plumber Guy had fiddled around with it quite a bit and messing around with it in the morning didn't seem appealing. I stood at the controls and Bill at the door (photos of the set-up are here). I turned on the water. Bill's hand barely had time to get wet when we saw the water accumulating in the shower tray at a rapid clip. I turned off the shower. We heard a kind of weak trickle as the water drained verrrrrry sloooooowly. The shower head was dripping. I knew this was most likely just because I'd turned off the shower and it would stop, but there wasn't any room to add any more water in the bottom of the shower without it overflowing. I had visions of myself downstairs trying to read or knit and wondering all the while if the dripping had started up again. I started bailing the water out of the shower. Then I said, 'This is really stupid. I'm going to see if I can take care of this myself.'  I waded in.   

You can barely see the drain in this photo--specifically the silver dome thing sitting on top.

Before the plumber came, that was sitting tight in the drain opening. Now it was just perched on top with space between it and the shower floor. I lifted it off. The water continued to trickle. I looked inside the drain and spotted a piece of PVC pipe with a kind of rim that allowed it to perch on the rim of the drain. I pulled that out and discovered that it was open on both ends and had been sitting in a kind of plastic cup. There were no holes or anything in this cup--you could have had a drink of water out of it. I pulled that out. The water drained almost instantly. Bill and I examined these things and wondered wtf they were doing in the drain and what on earth could be their purpose? I took a look inside the drain opening and discovered what the issue was. The drain does not drain right down, like this: T (with the top horizontal bar being the shower floor and the vertical bar being the drain). Rather, it drains like this: T-- . There's a small area with a solid bottom beneath the drain opening and off of that comes the actual drain pipe. The plastic cup and PVC things were sitting in there and blocking the pipe that drains the water. 

When we discovered the water backing up, I contacted F. When I discovered what the issue was, I messaged her again, told her what I'd done and suggested that we might just leave the stuff out of the drain and cover the opening with one of those round flattish strainer things with holes. She said that seemed like a good idea and she'd be over in the morning. We left everything as it was. The next morning, she came over, looked at everything, wondered aloud wtf that stuff was even doing in the drain, and said that she was sure he showed her some kind of basket thing with holes that would act like a strainer. No such thing was anywhere to be found. She agreed with my idea regarding how to proceed, so that's what we did. We've been taking uneventful showers ever since. We continue to await the bespoke bracket. No breath is being held while we wait. 

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